A 1999 New York exhibition of contemporary British art, yBa (young British artist), notoriously included a huge painting of a child murderer, animal carcasses floating in formaldehyde and a painting of the Virgin Mary that incorporated porn magazine pictures and elephant dung. "I wanted to work out why this art could be successfully marketed within Britain and the U.S. and, moreover, used in New Labour's rebranding exercises as the exciting new image of Cool Britannia," says Legge.
"Brits think of Americans as gauche and incapable of irony," Legge says. "The fantasy endures of playing Greece to America's Rome, adding refinement and diplomacy to America's foreign policy while benefiting from the association. I believe that what British art was doing was marketing itself as a failure – the failed empire (Britain) selling itself to the new imperial centre (the U.S.) as damaged goods.
"There's a kind of gratifying mutual indignation that seems to be generated in these interactions of British art and U.S. reception," Legge says. "I've had to take into account the rhetoric of national exclusiveness that goes with contemporary British art – the claims that an American just cannot 'get it.'"
As a Canadian – the stereotypical go-betweens and negotiators – she has a particular interest in these relations. Her work on issues of national stereotypes as filters carries through into her current work on the major Canadian artist Michael Snow in his international contexts. Legge's research, which will be published in book form, is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, a Connaught grant and Victoria College at U of T.
CONTACT: Professor Elizabeth Legge, Department of Fine Art, 416-585-4447, eliz.legge@utoronto.ca or Michah Rynor, U of T public affairs, 416-978-2104, michah.rynor@utoronto.ca