Michael Snow: Lives and Works

A biography of Canada's greatest living artist.

Michael Snow is rightly recognized as the greatest living Canadian artist, and he is also acknowledged as one of the most significant figures in Canadian art history. In a productive, lengthy career, he has, in a wide variety of genres, asked (and often answered) some of the most vexing and important issues in the history of art. During his career, the notion of what constitutes a work of art has undergone many changes, and he has been in the forefront of defining these changes.

In many ways, he is the visual artist as intellectual: his images are vibrant and compelling but so are the ideas behind them. Ultimately, his work is about perception. What do we really see when we look at a work of art? What is the act of looking all about? What exactly is a work of art?

Michael Snow: Lives and Works is a personal and intimate portrait of an artist who has helped shaped the face of Canadian art in our time.
First-ever biography and critical survey of a major artist who disrupted the Canadian art establishment

• Features gorgeous colour reproductions of many of Snow’s most vivid and important pieces, which have not been collected together previously
• Snow works in a range of media, including film, installation, sculpture, and photography
• A personal and intimate look at a major Canadian talent at work ― showing his struggles alongside his towering successes
• Author has written six novels and nine biographies, including the GG-nominated biography of Herbert Read, The Last Modern
• Author of Inner Places, a biography of Canadian painter David Milne, shortlisted for a Hamilton Literary Award