T. J. Clark (art historian)

Last updated
T. J. Clark
BornTimothy James Clark
(1943-04-12) 12 April 1943 (age 80)
Bristol, England
OccupationArt historian, writer
LanguageEnglish
NationalityBritish
Notable worksThe Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and his Followers
Spouse Anne Wagner

Timothy James "T. J." Clark (born 12 April 1943) is a British art historian and writer. He taught art history in a number of universities in England and the United States, including Harvard and the University of California, Berkeley.

Contents

Clark has been influential in developing the field of art history, examining modern paintings as an articulation of the social and political conditions of modern life. His orientation is distinctly leftist, and he has often referred to himself as a Marxist. [1] [2]

Life and work

University of California, Berkeley, where Clark was a professor until his retirement in 2010 UC-Berkeley-campus-overview-from-hills.h.jpg
University of California, Berkeley, where Clark was a professor until his retirement in 2010

Clark attended Bristol Grammar School. He completed his undergraduate studies at St John's College, Cambridge, obtaining a first-class honours degree in 1964. He received his PhD in art history from the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London in 1973. He lectured at the University of Essex 1967–69 and then at Camberwell College of Arts as a senior lecturer, 1970–74.

During this time he was also a member of the British Section of the Situationist International, from which he was expelled along with the other members of the English section. He was also involved in the group King Mob.

In 1973 he published two books based on his PhD dissertation: The Absolute Bourgeois: Artists and Politics in France, 1848–1851 and Image of the People: Gustave Courbet and the Second French Republic, 1848–1851. He taught at the University of California, Los Angeles in 1974–76. In 1976, he became a founding member of the Caucus for Marxism and Art of the College Art Association.

Clark returned to Britain in 1976 when he was appointed professor and head of the Department of Fine Art at the University of Leeds. In 1980 Clark joined the Department of Fine Arts at Harvard University, which angered some of the more conservative, connoisseurship-oriented faculty members, especially the Renaissance art historian Sydney Freedberg, with whom he had a public feud.

In 1982 he published an essay, "Clement Greenberg's Theory of Art", critical of prevailing Modernist theory, which prompted a notable and pointed exchange with Michael Fried. This exchange contributed to the debate between formalist and social histories of art.

Clark's works have taken art history in a new direction, away from traditional preoccupations with style and iconography. His books regard modern paintings as expressions of sociopolitical conditions in modern life.

In 1988 he joined the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, where he held the George C. and Helen N. Pardee Chair as Professor of Modern Art until his retirement.

In 1991 Clark was awarded the College Art Association's Distinguished Teaching of Art History Award. Notable students include Thomas E. Crow, Michael Kimmelman, John O'Brian and Jonathan Weinberg.

As a member of Retort, a Bay Area-based collective of radical intellectuals, he co-authored the book Afflicted Powers: Capital and Spectacle in a New Age of War, published by Verso Books in 2005. [3]

In 2005 Clark received a Mellon Foundation Distinguished Achievement Award. [4] In 2006 he received an honorary degree from the Courtauld Institute of Art. In 2007, he was elected to the American Philosophical Society. [5] He and his wife Anne Wagner, who also taught art history at Berkeley, retired in 2010 and moved to London. He continues to be active as a guest lecturer, author, and now as a poet. [6] His book Picasso and Truth: From Cubism to Guernica is based on his Mellon Lectures in Fine Art delivered in spring 2009. [7] His most recent book is If These Apples Should Fall: Cézanne and the Present (2022).

In 2020, he delivered the Gifford Lectures on Heaven on Earth: Painting and the Life to Come at the University of Glasgow. [8]

Publications

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Guy Debord</span> French philosopher and Marxist theorist

Guy-Ernest Debord was a French Marxist theorist, philosopher, filmmaker, critic of work, member of the Letterist International, founder of a Letterist faction, and founding member of the Situationist International. He was also briefly a member of Socialisme ou Barbarie.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gustave Courbet</span> French realist painter (1819–1877)

Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet was a French painter who led the Realism movement in 19th-century French painting. Committed to painting only what he could see, he rejected academic convention and the Romanticism of the previous generation of visual artists. His independence set an example that was important to later artists, such as the Impressionists and the Cubists. Courbet occupies an important place in 19th-century French painting as an innovator and as an artist willing to make bold social statements through his work.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anarchism and the arts</span> Association of anarchism with the arts

Anarchism has long had an association with the arts, particularly with visual art, music and literature. This can be dated back to the start of anarchism as a named political concept, and the writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon on the French realist painter Gustave Courbet. In an essay on Courbet of 1857 Proudhon had set out a principle for art, which he saw in the work of Courbet, that it should show the real lives of the working classes and the injustices working people face at the hands of the bourgeoisie.

Michael Martin Fried is a modernist art critic and art historian. He studied at Princeton University and Harvard University and was a Rhodes Scholar at Merton College, Oxford. He is the J.R. Herbert Boone Professor Emeritus of Humanities and Art History at the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, United States.

<i>The Painters Studio</i> Painting by Gustave Courbet

The Painter's Studio is an 1855 oil-on-canvas painting by Gustave Courbet. It is located in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, France.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Champfleury</span> French author

Jules François Felix Fleury-Husson, who wrote under the name Champfleury, was a French art critic and novelist, a prominent supporter of the Realist movement in painting and fiction.

Julien Vallou de Villeneuve was a French painter, lithographer and photographer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Realism (arts)</span> Artistic style of representing subjects realistically

Realism in the arts is generally the attempt to represent subject matter truthfully, without artificiality and avoiding speculative and supernatural elements. The term is often used interchangeably with naturalism, although these terms are not synonymous. Naturalism, as an idea relating to visual representation in Western art, seeks to depict objects with the least possible amount of distortion and is tied to the development of linear perspective and illusionism in Renaissance Europe. Realism, while predicated upon naturalistic representation and a departure from the idealization of earlier academic art, often refers to a specific art historical movement that originated in France in the aftermath of the French Revolution of 1848. With artists like Gustave Courbet capitalizing on the mundane, ugly or sordid, realism was motivated by the renewed interest in the common man and the rise of leftist politics. The realist painters rejected Romanticism, which had come to dominate French literature and art, with roots in the late 18th century.

<i>A Burial at Ornans</i> Painting by Gustave Courbet

A Burial at Ornans is a painting of 1849–50 by Gustave Courbet. It is widely regarded as a major turning point in 19th-century French art. The painting records a funeral in Courbet's birthplace, the small town of Ornans. It treats an ordinary, provincial funeral with frank realism, and on the grand scale traditionally reserved for the heroic or religious scenes of history painting. Its exhibition at the 1850–51 Paris Salon created an "explosive reaction" and brought Courbet instant fame. It is currently displayed at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, France

<i>The Stone Breakers</i> 1849 painting by Gustave Courbet

The Stone Breakers, also known as Stonebreakers, was an 1849 oil painting on canvas by the French painter Gustave Courbet. Now destroyed, the image remains an often-cited example of the artistic movement Realism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joseph Koerner</span> American art historian (born 1958)

Joseph Leo Koerner is an American art historian and filmmaker. He is the Victor S. Thomas Professor of the History of Art and Architecture and Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University. Since 2008 he has also been Senior Fellow at the Harvard's Society of Fellows.

<i>Le Sommeil</i> Painting by Gustave Courbet

Le Sommeil is an erotic oil painting on canvas by French artist Gustave Courbet created in 1866. The painting, which depicts a lesbian couple, is also known as the Two Friends and Indolence and Lust.

<i>La rencontre</i> Painting by Gustave Courbet

The Meeting or "Bonjour, Monsieur Courbet" is an oil-on-canvas painting by Gustave Courbet, made in 1854. It depicts the artist on his way to Montpellier meeting his patron Alfred Bruyas, his servant Calas and his dog. One of the most emblematic works by the artist, it is also one of his most popular. The composition is based on the myth of the Wandering Jew.

<i>Le ruisseau noir</i> Painting by Gustave Courbet

Le ruisseau noir (The Black Stream) (also known in En. as Stream in a Ravine) is an oil-on-canvas landscape painted in 1865 by the French artist Gustave Courbet. It is currently held and exhibited at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.

<i>Les raboteurs de parquet</i> Impressionist painting by Gustave Caillebotte

Les raboteurs de parquet is an oil painting by French Impressionist Gustave Caillebotte. The canvas measures 102 by 146.5 centimetres. It was originally given by Caillebotte's family in 1894 to the Musée du Luxembourg, then transferred to the Musée du Louvre in 1929. In 1947, it was moved to the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume, and in 1986, it was transferred again to the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, where it is currently displayed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Realism (art movement)</span> 19th-century artistic movement

Realism was an artistic movement that emerged in France in the 1840s, around the 1848 Revolution. Realists rejected Romanticism, which had dominated French literature and art since the early 19th century. Realism revolted against the exotic subject matter and the exaggerated emotionalism and drama of the Romantic movement. Instead, it sought to portray real and typical contemporary people and situations with truth and accuracy, and not avoiding unpleasant or sordid aspects of life. The movement aimed to focus on unidealized subjects and events that were previously rejected in art work. Realist works depicted people of all classes in situations that arise in ordinary life, and often reflected the changes brought by the Industrial and Commercial Revolutions. Realism was primarily concerned with how things appeared to the eye, rather than containing ideal representations of the world. The popularity of such "realistic" works grew with the introduction of photography—a new visual source that created a desire for people to produce representations which look objectively real.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gustave Léonard de Jonghe</span> Flemish painter (1829–1893)

Gustave Léonard de Jonghe, Gustave Léonard De Jonghe or Gustave de Jonghe was a Flemish painter known for his glamorous society portraits and genre scenes. After training in Brussels, he started out as a painter of historical and religious subjects in a Realist style. After moving to Paris where he spent most of his active career, he became successful with his scenes of glamorous women in richly decorated interiors.

<i>Young Ladies of the Village</i>

Young Ladies of the Village or The Village Maids is an 1852 oil-on-canvas painting by the French artist Gustave Courbet, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York. It is signed bottom left "G. Courbet".

<i>The Eternal Feminine</i> (Cézanne) Painting by Paul Cézanne

The Eternal Feminine is an 1877 oil-on-canvas painting by the French Post-Impressionist artist Paul Cézanne. The ambiguous work shows men gathered around a single female figure. A range of professions are represented: writers, lawyers, and a painter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Max Buchon</span> French writer

Joseph Maximilien Buchon also known as Max Buchon was a French poet, novelist and translator. He was from Salins-les-Bains and for a time he lived in Switzerland. He founded the newspaper, La Démocratie Salinoise.

References

  1. admin (21 February 2018). "Clark, T. J." arthistorians.info. Retrieved 23 March 2018.
  2. Kramer, Hilton (March 1985). "T.J. Clark and the Marxist critique of modern painting". The New Criterion . Retrieved 23 March 2018.
  3. Iain A. Boal (2005). Afflicted Powers: Capital and Spectacle in a New Age of War . Verso. ISBN   978-1-84467-031-4.
  4. "2005 Distinguished Achievement Award Recipients Named". The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. 2005. Archived from the original on 26 May 2013.
  5. "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 14 May 2021.
  6. "TJ Clark: The Art Historian and the Poet". The Wheeler Centre. 15 June 2011. Archived from the original on 11 June 2012.
  7. "Renowned Art Historians T.J. Clark and Anne M. Wagner Featured in "Not Modern Art: An Exchange" at Mills College". mills.edu. 2 February 2010. Archived from the original on 3 September 2014.
  8. "The Glasgow Gifford Lectures". gla.ac.uk. University of Glasgow.