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NOTESAMONG THE MANY publications spawned bythe Bicentennial of the French Revolution,L'Image de la Revolution française au Québec178g- 198 g, éd. Michel Grenon (HMH,$25.95), is probably the most interesting toCanadian readers. The cover reproduces Jean-Paul Mousseau's painting La Marseillaise( 1956). To François-Marc Gagnon, in his contribution"La Révolution dans la pensée automatiste,"this work embodies an importantchange in Quebec's perception of the Revolutionfrom a destructive to an inspiring event.Other essays also chronicle the significance ofthe year 1789 for Quebec art, such as LaurierLacroix's account of the Desjardins collection— paintings saved by two French priests fromvandalized churches and museums and shippedto Quebec, where they formed one of the firstimportant art collections in the country, providingseventeenth- and eighteenth-centurymodels to local painters. Claudette Hould's "LaGravure révolutionnaire et son impact sur lesconsciences" discusses images of a differentkind, opening a potentially intriguing sourceof comparison with contemporary politicalcomic-strips and cartoons. The enormous resistanceamong Quebec conservatives to the ideasrepresented by the Revolution is discussed particularlywell in Pierre Savard's account of theCentennial, when French-Canadians (and theBritish!) boycotted the world exposition inParis. Literary allusions are the subject ofReginald Hamel's thorough "Révolution françaiseet littérature québécoise: Paroles geléeset idées gelées." Besides other illuminating contributions,the volume contains a meticulouslyprepared annotated bibliography bySerge Leroux. The reader's understanding ofthe issues raised in Grenon's collection is muchenhanced by consulting general works like EmmetKennedy, A Cultural History of the FrenchRevolution (Yale UP, £35.00), or A CriticalDictionary of the French Revolution, eds.François Furet and Mona Ozouf (Belknap Ρ,US$69.95). The former ranges through a wideselection of topics, such as "Paris Milieu andCultural Institution," "Popular Culture," "Enlightenmentand Christianity," literature, thefine arts, and education, while the latter is dividedby the headings "Events," "Actors," "Institutionsand Creations," "Ideas," and "Historiansand Commentators." Particularly engrossingwere the sections in both works on therhetoric employed by the revolutionaries. Kennedy'sdiscussion of "vandalism" (a wordcoined during the Revolution) is exemplaryand, unwittingly or not, evokes alarmingly closeparallels with recent and present political propaganda.Both books are richly illustrated andwell documented.E.-M. K.THERE HAVE BEEN several reminders that thecollage is a central technique in avant-gardistCanadian art and poetry: a new edition of jazzmusician-artist Al Neil's Changes (Nightwood,n.p. ), an autobiographical account of ajunkie's life in 1960s Vancouver; "Rezoning,"an exhibition of assemblages and collages byNeil, bill bissett, and others at the VancouverArt Gallery; and a special issue of The CapilanoReview on "Six West Coast artists whosework is often concerned with the literal andmetaphorical reconstruction of the fragmented."Important discussions of the collagehave been collected in Collage: Critical Views,éd. Katherine Hoffman (UMI, n.p.), a particularlytightly edited volume in which individualcontributions extensively respond to, andoften challenge, each other. Predictably Schwitters,Picasso, and Ernst receive much attention,but there arc also essays on "femmage" and"montage" and general discussions, such asGregory L. Ulmer, "The Object of Post-Criticism," and Donald B. Kuspit, "Collage:The Organizing Principle of Art in the Age ofthe Relativity of Art." Marjorie Perloff's metaphoricaluse of the collage in her work onmodernist poetry is not acceptable to HarryPolkinhorn, who insists that the term is onlylegitimate and useful if applied within a specifichistorical context. The collage also featuresin John Golding, Cubism: A History andan Analysis igoy-igi4 (Harvard, US$39.95/now mto 19.95), ^ third edition, and inDada/Dimensions, ed. Stephen C. Foster(UMI, n.p.). Collage is often the work of outsiderswhose work cannot be subsumed underestablished categories. Two seminal texts on theart of outsiders are Jean Dubuffet's manifestoon "art brut," Asphyxiating Culture (FourWalls Eight Windows, $17.95), now availablein a translation by Carol Volk, and John M.MacGregor's The Discovery of the Art of theInsane (Princeton, US$49.50), a richly illustratedwork written from a Jungian perspective.231