Julian Stallabrass

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Julian Stallabrass
Born1960 (age 63–64)
London, United Kingdom
NationalityBritish
EducationCourtauld Institute of Art (PHD, 1992)
Known forArt writing, cultural criticism
Notable workHigh Art Lite, Internet Art, Contemporary Art: A Very Short Introduction, Killing for Show
Website julianstallabrass.wordpress.com

Julian Stallabrass is a British art historian, art critic, photographer and curator. He was educated at Leighton Park School and New College, Oxford University where he studied PPE (Philosophy, Politics, and Economics). He obtained an MA and PhD in Art History from the Courtauld Institute of Art. While he has broad theoretical interests, he has been influenced by Marxism, [1] particularly influenced by the work of the Frankfurt School. He has written extensively on modern and contemporary art (including internet art), photography and the history of twentieth-century British art.

Contents

Life and work

Stallabrass was previously a professor at the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London. He left the Courtauld in 2022 [2] and is now an independent writer and curator.

He is on the editorial board of the New Left Review .

Stallabrass was highly critical of the Young British Artists movement, and their works and influence were the subject of his 1999 study High Art Lite, a term he coined as a disparaging synonym to the pervasive YBA acronym:

"As the art market revived [in the early- to mid- 1990s] and success beckoned, the new art became more evidently two-faced, looking still to the mass media and a broad audience but also to the particular concerns of the narrow world of art-buyers and dealers. To please both was not an easy task. Could the artists face both ways at once, and take both sets of viewers seriously? That split in attention, I shall argue, led to a wide public being successfully courted but not seriously addressed. It has left a large audience for high art lite intrigued but unsatisfied, puzzled at the work's meaning and wanting explanations that are never vouchsafed: the aim of this book is to suggest the direction some of those answers might take and to do so in a style that is as accessible as the art it examines." [3]

He curated the exhibition Art and Money Online at Tate Britain, London in 2001. In 2008 he selected the Brighton Photo Biennial and from the catalogue of which he edited the book Memory of Fire: Images of War and The War of Images (2013) [4]

His more recent work has explored the globalisation of art world, the documentary mode in contemporary art, the history of war photography, and the relation between political and cultural populism. He curated the main exhibition of the 2023 Thessaloniki PhotoBiennale on the theme of populism in photography.

Publications

Books by Stallabrass

Books edited by Stallabrass

Curated exhibitions

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References

  1. ↑ 3ammagazine Interview
  2. ↑ "Julian Stallabrass". Courtauld Institute of Art. Accessed 15 March 2017
  3. ↑ See: "Introduction." In, Julian Stallabrass, High Art Lite (London: Verso, 1999), p. 11, emphasis added.
  4. ↑ "Julian Stallabrass". 4 October 2013.
  5. ↑ "Main Exhibition: The Spectre of the People – PhotoBiennale". photobiennale-greece.gr. Retrieved 5 June 2024.
  6. ↑ "Failing Leviathan: Magnum Photographers and Civil War" is on display at the National Civil War Centre. Slate. Retrieved on 24 May 2024.
  7. ↑ "Brighton Photo Biennial 2008". Photoworks. Retrieved 5 June 2024.
  8. ↑ "Art Now: Art and Money Online | Tate Britain". Tate. Retrieved 5 June 2024.
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