PUBLICATIONS AND RESEARCH

The JRSP has supported an ongoing publication series on art and knowledge, and in addition supports researchers working on topics related to art and knowledge more broadly. This support is given through direct awards to scholars, as well as fellowships and scholarships to major Universities. For over ten years, the sculpture park also has commissioned lectures and presentations for our annual Company of Ideas forums.

JRSP Supported publications

Dr. Vid Simoniti and Dr. James Fox –
Art and knowledge after 1900: Interactions between modern art and thought

Jeffrey Rubinoff considered the value of Art as a Source of Knowledge to be central to his work stating: “The purpose of the work is to extend the ancient narrative of art and consequently rekindle the historical spirit of modernism. In addition to viewing the work, which includes the Sculpture Park itself, the goal is to revive the interdisciplinary creative impetus of early modernism and to attain the understanding of art as a serious and credible source of special insight for the evolution of ideas.”

Near the end of his life, he endowed the JRSP Educational Programme with the aim of expanding the perception of art as a source of knowledge through a major publication series. Dr. James Fox and Dr. Vid Simoniti’s Art and Knowledge After 1900 is the first in this series and a major milestone in what we hope will be a fruitful field of study. The book is available now for pre-order.

Art and Knowledge After 1900 is available on Amazon for pre-order and will ship December 5th.

Synopsis: “This ground-breaking new history of modern art explores the relationship between art and knowledge from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present day. Each chapter examines artistic responses to a particular discipline of knowledge, from quantum theory and theosophy to cybernetics and ethnic futurisms. The authors argue that art’s incursion into other intellectual disciplines is a defining characteristic of both modernism and postmodernism. Throughout, the volume poses a series of larger questions: is art a source of knowledge? If so, what kind of knowledge? And, ultimately, can it contribute to our understanding of the world in ways that thinkers from other fields should take seriously?”

Rubinoff PostDoctoral Award Winner Dr. Lieke Wijnia
Beyond the Return of Religion: Art and the Postsecular

Beyond the Return of Religion: Art and the Postsecular explores the conceptual potential of the postsecular for investigations of (late) modern art and religion. Indicating a public co-existence and merging of religion and the secular, the postsecular is approached as an alternative to the return of religion narrative. Rather than framing artistic concerns with religion as a recurrence after temporary absence, Lieke Wijnia shows how the postsecular allows for seeing the interaction between art and religion as an enduring, albeit transforming relationship of mutual nature. Whereas secularization theories are intrinsically connected to modernity, the postsecular requires a pluralized perspective, covering the processes of secularization, diversification, and spiritualization. The postsecular reinforces the interconnectedness of these processes, which are, in turn, embodied in the concept’s interdisciplinary nature. While this book predominantly focuses on visual art and its institutional context of the museum, the postsecular has interdisciplinary relevance for broader artistic and academic disciplines. Click here for an excerpt of the article 

Related publications

Art Historian Dr. James Fox publishes The Art of Jeffrey Rubinoff

Jeffrey Rubinoff is one of the great sculptors in steel of the second half of the twentieth century. In the 1970s and ‘80s he exhibited widely in the United States and Canada alongside Anthony Caro, Mark di Suvero and George Rickey, among others. However, in the early 2000s Rubinoff withdrew from the art world altogether and concentrated on creating an extraordinary sculpture park on Hornby Island.

 

Dr. Maria Tippett publishes Sculpture in Canada: A History

Tippet provides an enlightening survey of sculpture in Canada, from prehistoric times to the present, including sculptor Jeffrey Rubinoff. Tippett considers the influence of the church, governments, and special interest groups on the work of sculptors, noting that the size and expense of large sculptures means that they may be more affected by cultural, economic, and political forces

Related Articles in other Publications

Dr. Allan Antliff publishes article on Rubinoff in Anarchist Studies Vol 29

Dr. Allan Antliff explores Rubinoff’s contention that “Art is the Map of the Human Soul” in a short essay in volume 29, of Anarchist Studies. As Antliff writes: “I had the pleasure of getting to know the artist before his untimely passing, and quickly realised his views regarding art aligned with those of the American abstract expressionist movement’s anarchist founders (Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Clyfford Still). Like them, he sought to evoke the experience of the sublime, which he associated with a critical consciousness of our being in the world.”

Click here to link to the full article

Dr. Lawrence Badash publishes Nuclear Winter and the End of the Age of Agriculture

Dr. Lawrence Badash presented Nuclear Winter and the End of the Age of Agriculture to the 2010 Company of Ideas Forum. It was later published in Historia Scientiarum, Second series: international journal of the History of Science Society of Japan. (pp.150-163, Vol.20 No.2, ISSN 02854821). As Badash writes “Sculptor Jeffrey Rubinoff has advanced the concept that we now live in a period after the End of the Age of Agriculture:[1] From the prehistoric invention of agriculture to the end of World War II, people embraced a social contract with what became the ruling warrior class. Wars were fought for arable land and eventually for other resources, while the larger population produced wealth in return for protection. … Into this period of uncertainty the nuclear winter phenomenon was revealed to the public in 1983. It suggests that cities will surely burn in a nuclear war, propelling black smoke and soot high in the atmosphere. Blocked sunlight will fail to warm the Earth’s surface and, because of this climatic change of lowered light and temperature and reduced rainfall, agriculture will falter globally. It is all the more important that new political and social institutions be developed quickly to avoid such a calamity.”

Dr.  Aaron Rosen publishes A Tribe of His Own: Jeffrey Rubinoff’s Jewish Identity

Dr.  Aaron Rosen’s essay, A Tribe of His Own: Jeffrey Rubinoff’s Jewish Identity, was first commissioned as a chapter in Dr. James Fox’s anthology The Art of Jeffrey Rubinoff. It was published in Jewish Quarterly, 60:2, 22-29, and then reprinted again in brushes with faith. While resolutely rejecting religion as a viable basis for human spiritual maturation, Rosen nevertheless finds connections to theological understandings within Rubinoff’s work and writings.

Jeffrey Rubinoff Sculpture Park Publications

Publications on the Rubinoff sculpture collection

Jeffrey Rubinoff: Selected Sculpture Photos (2015)
The photos presented here are of sculptures completed by Rubinoff from 1981 to 2012. The sculptures are presented in the order of their creation, to emphasize the evolutionary nature of the artist’s working method. Unless otherwise noted, all of the following photographs were taken by the artist himself.

 

Rubinoff on Art (2013)
A collection of writing and essays which were presented at various Company of Ideas Forums, held at the Jeffrey Rubinoff Sculpture Park from 2008 to 2012. During the sculptor’s time participating in the Company of Ideas Forums, each Forum addressed issues that were at the root of the artistic and philosophical concerns which he outlines in his ‘Insights that evolved with and from the work of Jeffrey Rubinoff’. These insights were read aloud at the Inaugural Forum, and provide an insight into Rubinoff’s artistic motivation and personal ethics.

 

Proceedings of the Company of Ideas Forums

Perspectives On Art as a Source of Knowledge (2012 Forum Proceedings)
This book is the result of the fifth annual Company of Ideas Forum held at The Jeffrey Rubinoff Sculpture Park in May 2012. The Forum was founded on the premise that art acts in the production of knowledge by offering novel perspectives that can form a basis of evolution in thought. Its purpose has been to reassert the value of art as a source of knowledge. Over the past five years, the approach to this purpose has been to invite rigorous scholarly examination of Jeffrey Rubinoff’s sculpture and the insights he has advanced through The Jeffrey Rubinoff Sculpture Park.

 

Art as a Source of Knowledge: Beyond Rationalization (2013 Forum Proceedings)
This book is the record of proceedings of the 6th Annual Forum held at The Jeffrey Rubinoff Sculpture Park. The purpose of the Forum is to provide scholars and students an opportunity to learn about and discuss the context and value of the work of sculptor Jeffrey Rubinoff. This year’s Forum continued the theme begun in 2012 on Art as a Source of Knowledge. It addressed both Rubinoff’s argument that the cultural origins of rationalizations for war can be found at beginning of the age of agriculture, and his proposal for how these might be overcome.

 

Context and Meaning in the Work of Jeffrey Rubinoff (2014 Forum Proceedings)
This book is the record of proceedings of the 7th Annual Forum held at The Jeffrey Rubinoff Sculpture Park. The purpose of the forum is to provide scholars and students an opportunity to discuss the context and value of the work of sculptor Jeffrey Rubinoff. Since 2012 each forum has also explicitly furthered the understanding of art as a source of knowledge. In 2014 the forum provided the opportunity for a group of historians, art historians, and cultural historians working on a book on Rubinoff, to gather insights for their respective chapters. It was the first forum in the series to dispense with the traditional paper presentations, in favour of a series of six dialogue questions posed by the book’s editor, Cambridge University art historian and BBC broadcaster Dr. James Fox.

Sculpture and its Relation to Writing, Music, Photography and Modernism (2015 Forum Proceedings)
This volume is a record of the proceedings of the Company of Ideas Forum held at The Jeffrey Rubinoff Sculpture Park in June 2015. The purpose of the Company of Ideas Forums, of which this is the eighth, is to advance the perception of art as a source of knowledge.  This year’s forum, convened by the Canadian cultural historian Dr. Maria Tippett, considers the ways in which the work of Jeffrey Rubinoff and his contemporaries relates to the printed word, to photography, to music, and to modernism. Following each session, the Forum’s patron, Jeffrey Rubinoff, was invited to respond with his own observations before the discussion was opened to the delegates and observers.

Art and Moral Conscience (2019 Forum Proceedings)
This volume is a record of the proceedings of the Company of Ideas Forum On Art and Moral Conscience held at The Jeffrey Rubinoff Sculpture Park June 24 to 26, 2019. The Company of Ideas was established by Jeffrey Rubinoff in 2008 to discuss major issues relating to art and society. Of Rubinoff’s many concerns, the most fundamental related to morality and conscience. Rubinoff believed that a ‘mature individual conscience’ was not only the basis for original art but also for sustained social engagement. He was convinced that serious artists were obliged to address the biggest issues of their time, which in his view were the ‘existential threats’ of nuclear weapons and human genetic engineering. In doing so, they could influence their audience’s thinking and contribute to historical change.