Faculty Member, Art History and Theory
About
I'm an art historian, theorist, and curator with a PhD from the University of Essex. My PhD dissertation, titled "October and the Expanded Field of Art and Criticism" analyses the art-critical journal October in relation to expanded, impure, notions of the art medium and its specificity. Within the dissertation, I mostly focus on the years 1976-81, a time which saw the birth of October, their important contribution to discussions of postmodernism within the visual arts, and the return of figurative painting under the guise of Neoexpressionism. Ultimately, the dissertation argues that rather than rejecting the issue of medium-specificity as a Greenbergian-modernist concern, October actively reconfigures medium-specificity in relation to processes of displacement and expansion.
My current research, presently in its early stages, is titled "The Time of Art: Ek-stasis, Temporality, and Historicity" and aims to examine disjunctive and non-synchronal modes of temporality and historicity in art production and criticism, and to further consider how these modes impact upon the historiography of art. Of particular interest here are the temporal frameworks found in writings by Riegl, Wölfflin, Warburg, Panofsky (to name art history's founders); as well as Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger, Gadamer. Recent art-historical texts that explicity or implicity links question of temporality and historicity in tandem with artworks and methodology -- for example, Fried, Koerner, Didi-Huberman, Wood and Nagel, and Holly -- are especially important to my present research.
Linked to this aspect of research is a deep interest in the use of the term "contemporary" or "contemporaneity" as a way of describing some of today's art. It's clear enough, it seems, that "contemporary" is being opposed to modernism or the modern; but there seem to be contradictory views as to whether "contemporaneity" revises postmodernism by giving it a new name and identifying certain characteristics or whether "contemporaneity" in fact appertains to a mode of art production, institutionalization, and reflection that comes after and is qualitively different from postmodernism. With regard to these issues, one might interrogate if the shift toward contemporaneity intersects with the resurgence of aesthetics in recent years (the rapid translation of Jacques Rancière's writings being a particular indicator), and if this might be one aspect that differs contemporaneity from the anti-aesthetic positions of postmodernism.
I am also co-editor of Rebus: A Journal of Art History and Theory (http://www.essex.ac.uk/arthistory/rebus/) and a member of the Editorial Supervisory Board of Artfractures (http://www.artfractures.com/journal/)
For more details, email me!
Curatorial Projects
Pam Dan. Minories Gallery of Art, 22 October – 6 December 2011.
Such Stuff: Doug Selway. Minories Gallery of Art, 21 October – 6 December 2011.
Joseph Robinson Waiting in the Wings: War, Theatre, Portraits. Minories Art Gallery, Colchester, Essex, England (3 September to 15 October 2011)
M21: Evolution (co-curated with Hugo Engelbrecht and Lena von Lapschina). Group exhibition of ten artists: Bill Conger, Iv Toshain, Katrín I. Jónsdóttir Hjördísardóttir, Kama Sokolnicka, Ania Nidzgorska, Magdalena Pelmus, Judith Rhrmoser, Lena von Lapschina, Dave de Leeuw, and Jen Blazina Various locations around Langenlois, Austria. (12 August to 12 November 2011)
Publications:
Articles
“Different Times: Melancholia, Anachronism, De-Distancing.” For Amanda Boetzkes and Aron Vinegar (ed.), Heidegger and the Work of Art History (Ashgate Press, forthcoming in 2012/2013)
“Rosalind Krauss” in Mark Durden (ed.), Fifty Key Thinkers in Photography Theory (London, Routledge, forthcoming 2012/2013)
“Surfaces of Evolution” in M21: Evolution, exhibition catalogue (2012)
“MIND YOUR HEAD: On Speculative Research for the Public in Elaine Tribley” in Laura Earley (ed.), Market Project (2012).
“On (Not) Seeing Mirrors” in Isadora Liqurori et al (ed), Seeking Beyond the Surface (Colchester: Art Exchange, 2012).
“Outside—Outside What?” in Katia Denysova and Lisa Temple-Cox, Outside 11: Artist as Outsider (Colchester: Cuckoo Farm Studios, 2012).
“Gerhard Richter: Panorama” in Cassone, (December 2011) http://www.cassone-art.com/magazine/article/2011/12/the-diversity-and-
“Painting Atmospheres: Landscape and Abstraction in the Art of Pam Dan” in Pam Dan, exhibition catalogue (Colchester: Minories Art Gallery, 2011).
“Doug Selway’s Such Stuff, or, ‘What’s Intangible, Transitory, Mediating, Participatory, and Rendered in the Public Sphere?’’ in Doug Selway: Such Stuff, exhibition catalogue (Colchester: Minories Art Gallery, 2011).
“Want, Want, Want: John Smith’s The Girl Chewing Gum, or, The Disintegration of the Auteur” in Detours. Margins: Walking Between Worlds (Colchester: Art Exchange, 2011).
"Preface" and "Questions of Style: On Joseph Robinson's Visual Diaries" in Joseph Robinson Waiting in the Wings: War, Theatre, Portraits (Colchester: Minories Gallery, 2011).
“Lost and Found in all the Odd Places: On Looking for the Photograph” in Looking for the Photograph, exhibition catalogue (Colchester: Minories Gallery, 2011).
“Ellen Devall, or, The Underneaths of Textile Fragments,” in Ellen Devall: Exquisite Poverty, Fragments: Song of the Shirt (London: Black Box Press, 2011).
"Goldsmiths degree show/MFA show" in Pied-à-Terre, 2010.http://www.geiab.org/GEIAB_DEUX/index.php?lang=eng&revue=showit&r
“On Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Specific Objects without Specific Form” in Rebus: A Journal of Art History and Theory, issue 5, Summer 2010 (Available at http://www.essex.ac.uk/arthistory/rebus/issue5.htm).
"Diverse Realisms, Different Framings" in Diverse Realisms, exhibition catalogue (Colchester: Minories Gallery, 2010).
“Waiting for Time to Tell (or Not)” in Artfractures Quarterly, no. 3, Spring 2010. http://www.artfractures.com/journal/
"Antarctica Starts Here: The Restless Travels of Chris Dobrowolski" in Chris Dobrowolski: Antarctica, exhibition catalogue (University of Essex, 2010). Available online:
http://www.holdall.info/chris/default.asp?id_site=56143905&id_subject=
"Gerhard Richter Portraits, National Portrait Gallery" in Rebus: a journal of art history and theory, issue 3, 2009. (Available in http://www.essex.ac.uk/arthistory/rebus/issue3.htm)
"Allegorical Impulses and the Body in Painting" in Rebus: a journal of art history and theory, Issue 1 2008
(Available http://www.essex.ac.uk/arthistory/rebus/issue1.htm)
"The New Critical Historians of Art?" in James Elkins and Michael Newman (eds.), The State of Art Criticism (London and New York: Routledge, 2008), pp. 289-295.
"Automatism: Proving Reality Undone" in Reality Undone, exhibition catalogue (University of Essex Art Gallery, 2007).
Book Reviews
"Redrawing the Medium." Review of Rosalind Krauss, Perpetual Inventory in Art History, vol. 34, n. 3 June 2011, pp. 612-614.
Review of Ann Temkin, Gabriel Orozco in The Art Book, vol. 17, n. 4, November 2010, p. 41.
Review of Bennett Simpson and Chrissie Iles (eds), Dan Graham: Beyond in The Art Book, vol. 17, n. 2, May 2010, p. 28.
Review of Francis Halsall et al (eds.), Rediscovering Aesthetics in The Art Book, vol. 17, no. 1, February 2010, p. 50.
Review of Suzanne P. Hudson, Robert Ryman: Used Paint in The Art Book, vol. 17, no. 1, February 2010, pp. 43-44.
"Timing Wax, Timing Art History." Review of Roberta Panzanelli (ed), Ephemeral Bodies: Wax Sculpture and the Human Body in Art History, volume 33, no. 1, 2010, pp. 170-172.
Review of Carrie Lambert-Beatty, Being Watched: Yvonne Rainer and the 1960s in The Art Book, vol. 16, n. 4, November, 2009, pp. 72-73.
Review of Michael Fried, Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before, Tate Etc, no. 14, Autumn 2008 (Available at http://www.tate.org.uk/tateetc/issue14/books.htm)
Review of Arthur C. Danto, Unnatural Wonders: Essays From the Gap Between Art and Life in The Art Book, vol. 15, n. 4, November 2008, pp. 40-41.
Review of John C. Welchman (ed.), Institutional Critique and After in The Art Book, vol. 15, n. 3, August 2008, pp. 57-58.
Interviews
Bad at Sports Blog, 12 December 2009, http://badatsports.com/2009/rebus-issue-4-and-matthew-bowman/
Talks and Papers Given/Upcoming
“Indiscernibly Bad: On the Difference Between Paintings that Look Bad and Are Bad” Association of Art Historians conference, forthcoming in March 2012.
“The Work of Art Criticism as Collaboration” at Department of Fine Art, Newcastle University, March 2012.
“A Tour of the New Monuments of Langenlois” at M21: Evolution exhibition, Langenlois, Austria, August 2011.
“What is the Work of the Work of Art and When Does the Work of the Work of Art Work?” for Myriad: Fine Art Degree Show of Colchester School of Art, Design and Media at Candid Arts Trust, London, July 2011.
“Who’s Afraid of Conceptual Art?” at Jaywick Martello Tower, April 2011.
“Unitednationsplaza: Art as Education, Students as Audience/Public, and the Art School as Gesamtkunstwerk?” 37th Association of Art Historians Conference, April 2011, University of Warwick as part of the Art School Educated session.
Round table discussion between myself, Holly Crawford, Matthew Poole and Prof. Neil Cox (chair), Lakeside Theatre, University of Essex, 22nd October 2010.
“Melancholic Distance, De-Distancing, and Spanning in Art-Historical Writing.” 36th Association of Art Historians Conference, April 2010, University of Glasgow, as part of the Heidegger and the Work of Art History Session.
"The Art Historian as Sherlock Holmes (Rather than as Robert Langdon)" Colchester Library, Essex. As part of the Essex Book Festival, 20 March 2010.
“Different Times: Melancholia versus Anachronism” University of Essex, History of Art Department, 12th November.
“Waiting for Time to Tell (or Not)” Association of Art Historians 35th Annual Conference, Manchester, 3rd April 2009. Repeated: University of Essex, Art History and Theory PhD Forum, 23rd April 2009.
“Interpretations of Interpretation—Allegory and Hermeneutics.” Postgraduate Philosophy Forum, Department of Philosophy, University of Essex. February 2008
“On Reality Undone.” Exhibition talk (alongside Margaret Iversen) for Reality Undone, University Gallery, May 2007.
“Postmodernism and Allegory.” Lecture given at the Department of Art History and Theory, University of Essex, as part of Inventing Art History postgraduate course (taught by Margaret Iversen). October 2006.
“On Marcel Duchamp’s Boîte-en-Valise and André Malraux’s musée imaginaire.” Department of Photography at London College of Communications as part of The Box and the Archive Seminars. May 2006.
Contact Information
| Address: | 30 Spindrift Way, Wivenhoe, Essex, England. CO7 9GW |
| Telephone: |
Email me initially. |
| IM: | http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/profile.php?ref=profile&id=588231696 |
