Douglas Coupland

Douglas Coupland (b. 1961, Baden-Söllingen, Germany) is a Canadian journalist and novelist best known for observations on modern-day American culture and for popularizing the term Generation X. Coupland was born on a Canadian military base in Germany. His family relocated to Canada in the mid-1960s and he grew up in Vancouver, British Columbia. In 1984 he went to art school to become a sculptor but then moved to Hawaii to study Japanese business science. After interning briefly at a company in Japan, he returned to Canada and began writing for a magazine based in Toronto. Deftly capturing the spirit of the age or, as the artist refers to it, “the 21st century condition,” Douglas Coupland’s ideas are often encountered on the written page. But the themes he explores in his writing have appeared in his artwork in which we encounter his incisive social analysis in a variety of forms including installation, painting, photography, prints, sculpture, quilts and wallpaper. His synthesis of contemporary events, popular culture, new technologies and art historical references―that range from the paintings of Emily Carr and the Group of Seven to the Pop sensibility of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein―resists an identifiable style. By incorporating everyday materials and objects and referencing images that have become culturally iconic, he probes the way that things, images and processes of contemporary life affect our understanding of the world around us. https://coupland.com/