Fernande Saint-Martin

Fernande Saint-Martin (March 28, 1927 – December 11, 2019) was a Canadian art critic, museologist, semiologist, visual arts theorist and writer. A graduate of the Université de Montréal and McGill University, her career began at La Presse in 1954 before being made editor-in-chief of Châtelaine magazine in 1960. Saint-Martin left the magazine in 1972 and was made director of the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal. She was a professor and researcher at Université Laval and later Université du Québec à Montréal from 1979 to 1996. Saint-Martin wrote several books and essays, contributed to various art publications and was awarded the Molson Prize in Humanities and Social Sciences from the Canada Council for her work in semiology in 1989. She was also president of the International Association for Visual Semiotics from 1990 to 1994.

Early life and education Saint-Martin was born on March 28, 1927, in Montreal, Quebec, to the health medical officer Théo Saint-Martin and Emelda Montbriand. She was the granddaughter of the socialist and l’Université ouvrière founder Albert Saint-Martin. She earned Bachelor of Arts degrees in medieval studies in 1947, and philosophy in 1948 from the Université de Montréal. Saint-Martin went on to graduate with a Bachelor of Arts degree in French Studies in 1951 and a Master of Arts degree in French literature in 1952 from the McGill University. In 1973, she returned to education, graduating from McGill with a Doctor of Philosophy degree in literature with her dissertation on Samuel Beckett's fictional world.

Career Following the completion of her education, Saint-Martin began working in student and union journalism. She began working for La Presse in 1954, where she systemically promoted working women in the publication, and talked about the least active women and conducted interviews as she expanded from two to six journalists. From the 1950s to the 1960s, Saint-Martin got involved in feminist activism, promoting contraception and social rights relating to advancing female equality in society, and defending women intellectuals. In 1958, Saint-Martin published the essay La littérature et le non-verbal: essai sur la langue, and helped to establish the debate and ideas publication Situations that same year. She was given a mandate to restructure the museum so its influence could be extended and be opened to all forms of contemporary art. In 1977, Saint-Martin stepped down as director of the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal and began working as a professor and researcher in the Department of Art and History of the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) in 1979 following a brief period at Université Laval. and earned the André Laurendeau Award from the Association francophone pour le savoir that same year. Between 1990 and 1994, Saint-Martin was the International Association for Visual Semiotics' president. In September 1996, Saint-Martin retired from the UQAM to focus primarily on writing. A tribute to her was organised by the L’Académie des lettres du Québec and the Fondation Guido Molinari on February 15, 2020.

Analysis Christine Palmiéri described Saint-Martin as "fascinating as a teacher" and "was not just giving material, she was thinking at the same time." Lev Manovich of The American Journal of Semiotics wrote that the author "follows the model of formal grammar, where language is described as a set of elements combined according to syntactic rules to form statements."