Gregory Battcock (1937-1980) was an American art historian, art critic, and painter from New York City [1] who wrote a series of Dutton paperbacks that anthologized critical writings on new art tendencies in contemporary art, such as Minimalism, Conceptual Art, [2] Video Art, [3] and Super Realism. [4] His first anthology, The New Art, was published in 1966 and revised in 1973. [5] Idea Art: A Critical Anthology, about conceptual art, was his most impactful book. [6]
Battcock attended Michigan State University, the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome, and Hunter College. He earned his Ph.D. from New York University in 1978 with a dissertation titled Constructivism and Minimal Art: Some Aesthetic, Theoretical and Critical Correlations. [7]
He wrote frequently for the art magazines Art & Artists and Domus. [8] Battcock taught fine art at William Paterson College [9] and was art critic for the New York Free Press. In the late 1960s and early-’70s, Battcock contributed columns on art and life to tabloids such as Gay and the New York Review of Sex.
He was editor-in-chief of Arts Magazine (1973-1975). In 1977 he co-published the tabloid Trylon & Perisphere with Ron Whyte that included satiric art criticism and soft-core eroticism. [4] He appeared in the Andy Warhol films Eating Too Fast , Horse , and Batman Dracula . [10]
Battcock was murdered in Puerto Rico on December 25, 1980. [8] [11] [12]
