John Spike
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John Thomas Spike (born November 8, 1951 in New York City) is an American art historian, author, and consultant, specializing in the Italian Renaissance and Baroque periods. He is also a prominent contemporary art critic and past director of the Florence Biennale.
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[edit] Childhood, youth, and personal life
Spike grew up in New York City and Tenafly, New Jersey where he was a friend and classmate of the actor Ed Harris at Tenafly High School. His father was the Rev. Robert Spike, a prominent figure in the civil rights movement in the 1960s[1] and his brother is Paul Spike, an author and the first American to be named editor of the British satirical magazine Punch. After undergraduate studies at Wesleyan University, he earned his Ph.D. from Harvard University in art history in 1979. His dissertation was the first complete study of Mattia Preti (1613-1699), an important painter of the Caravaggio school. Spike was later awarded honorary citizenship of Taverna, the Italian city that was Preti's birthplace, in recognition of his studies of Preti.
As of 2007, he lives in Florence, Italy with his wife Michèle Kahn Spike, a lawyer and biographer of Matilda of Tuscany, and is the father of one son, Nicholas.
[edit] Career as Art Historian
In the course of his career, Spike has organized art exhibitions and read lectures at important museums around the world, including the Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna; the Galleria degli Uffizi and the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Florence; the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth; the Pierpont Morgan Library and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Musée du Louvre, Paris; the Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart; the National Museum of Fine Arts, Valletta, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. He has also read lectures at Harvard, Yale and Princeton Universities, and the University of Malta. He is permanent consultant to two Italian museums, the Museo Civico di Taverna and the Museo Civico di Urbania, as well as many years friend and consultant to the Cathedral Museum of Mdina and the National Museum of Fine Arts, Valletta, Malta. In 2006 Spike was also appointed to the Board of the Muscarelle Art Museum of the College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia.
Among the books Spike has published on the Florentine Renaissance are Masaccio (Abbeville Press, 1996) and Fra Angelico (Abbeville Press, 1997), both also available in Italian and French editions. His Fra Angelico, which also appeared in a German edition by Hirmer Verlag, was named “Art Book of the Year 1997” by the Hearst newspapers in the USA. His catalogue raisonné of the paintings of Caravaggio was published in 2001 and reprinted in 2003.
In addition to his numerous articles and reviews on Caravaggio and Mattia Preti for art journals, including Treasures of Malta, Spike is a permanent member of the international advisory board of FMR and Art & Antiques. His contributions to culture and history have been recognized in Italy by the bestowal of the Premio Anthurium, 1998, the Annual Medal of the Accademia delle Belle Arti di Messina, 2001, the Premio Anassilaos, 2002 and Man of the Year by the Tuscan American Foundation, Florence, 2006. Currently he is working on a major new biography of Michelangelo.
[edit] Career as Contemporary Art Critic
Spike has written essays for books and exhibition catalogues on many contemporary artists, both in New York City and in Italy. He was a member of the Jury for the first Biennale Internazionale dell’Arte Contemporanea, Florence, Italy, in December 1997. As director, 1998-2005, Spike curated four editions of the Florence Biennale, establishing it as the largest contemporary art show in the world.
In 2005, Spike was also the sole juror of the Turku Biennial in Turku, Finland as well as a member of the jury for the Triennale of India in New Delhi. Spike has also been recently chosen to curate an archipelago sculpture park in Turku, Finland in conjunction with its designation as European Capital of Culture for the year 2011.
[edit] Bibliography
[edit] A. Books and exhibition catalogues on art and artists prior to 1800
Dissimilar Revelations. Essays on Neolithic Art, Fra Angelico, Velázquez, Goya and Cézanne. Edgewise, New York, 62 pp. with 8 b/w ills., 2003.
Gregorio Preti Paintings and Documents, with the assistance of Nicholas Spike, Centro Di, Firenze, 2003.
Il Senso del Piacere. Una collezione di nature morte. Skira, Milano, 230 pp. with 140 color plates + numerous b/w ills., 2002.
Caravaggio. Abbeville Press, New York, 272 pp. with 150 color plates + 20 b/w ills., plus CD-ROM, 2001.
Il Corteo Trionfale di Carlo V di Nicolaus Hogenberg. Un capitolo del Rinascimento in un’acquaforte delle collezioni roveresche. Catalogo della Mostra, Palazzo Ducale, Urbania, 92 pp. with 100 b/w ills., 1999.
Mattia Preti. Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings / Catalogo ragionato dei dipinti. [Centro Di, Firenze, per il Comune di Taverna], 454 pp. with 108 color plates + 460 b/w ills., 1999.
Mattia Preti e l’Ordine di San Giovanni tra la Calabria e Malta. Catalogo della Mostra, Museo Civico, Rende, 26 March - 12 June 1999, 95 pp. with 11 color plates.
L’Idea del Soggetto. Drawings by Mattia Preti (1613-1699). Catalogo della Mostra, National Museum of Fine Arts, Valletta, Malta, 23 December 1998 - 16 February 1999, 35 pp. with 40 color plates.
Mattia Preti. I documenti / The Collected Documents. [Centro Di, Firenze per la Banca di Credito Cooperativo della Sila Piccola - Taverna], 285 pp. with 30 color plates + 120 b/w ills., 1998.
Catalogo delle Opere di Mattia e Gregorio Preti a Taverna, Museo Civico di Taverna [Centro Di, Firenze, italiano/ English ed. bilingue], 137 pp., 50 color plates, 1997.
Disegni - Fonti - Ricerche per la maiolica rinascimentale di Casteldurante, Edizioni Biblioteca e Civico Museo di Urbania [Il Lavoro Editoriale], a cura di Gian Carlo Bojani e J.T. Spike, 142 pp. with 44 color plates + 57 b/w ills., 1997.
Masaccio, Fabbri Editori, 1995, 244 pp. with 97 color plates + 96 b/w ills. (French edition: Éditions Liana Levi, Paris; American edition, 1996: Abbeville Press, New York).
Fra Angelico, Fabbri Editori, 1996, 280 pp. with 90 color plates + 285 b/w ills. (French edition: Éditions Liana Levi, Paris; American edition, 1997: Abbeville Press, New York; German edition, 1997: Hirmer Verlag, München).
Catalogue of Italian Paintings in the Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1993, 112 pp. with 31 color plates + 42 b/w ills.
A Connoisseur's Guide to the Met, with Paul Magriel, Random House, New York, 1988, 235 pp. with 100 b/w ills.
The Age of Monarchy, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and The Franklin Mint, Japanese edition, 1987; English and French editions, 1988.
Giuseppe Maria Crespi and the Emergence of Genre Painting in Italy, The Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, 1986, 245 pp. with 52 color plates + 111 b/w ills.
Aspects of Sculpture: the Paul Magriel Collection, The Guild Hall Museum, Easthampton, New York, 1985, 103 pp. with 19 color plates + 72 b/w ills.
Baroque Portraiture in Italy: Works from North American Collections, The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, FL., 1984, 214 pp. with 19 col pls + 130 b/w ills.
Italian Still Life Paintings from Three Centuries, National Academy of Design, New York, 1983, 149 pp. with 50 color plates + 87 b/w ills.
The Illustrated Bartsch, Volumes 41, 42, 43 (formerly Bartsch, Le peintre-graveur, Volume XIX), Abaris Books, New York, 1981, 1982; Volume 30 (formerly XV, part 3), 1985. Co-editor, Volumes 28, 29 (formerly XV, parts 1 and 2), 1985, 1986.
Italian Baroque Paintings from New York Private Collections, The Art Museum, Princeton University, with Princeton University Press, 1980, 127 pp., color cover + 71 b/w ills.
[edit] B. Books and exhibition catalogues on art and artists after 1800
Angel Ramiro Sánchez, Grenning Gallery, Sag Harbor, NY, unpaginated with 26 color plates, 2003.
Dennis Campay: New Paintings, Lagerquist Gallery, Atlanta, Georgia, 120 pp. with 62 color plates, 2002.
Angel Orensanz Disegni: 1991-2000, Catalogo della Mostra, Galleria d’Arte Contemporanea di Palazzo Ducale, Pavullo, 64 pp. with 82 color plates, 2 June - 1 July 2001.
Rossano Naldi (1913-1994), Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze. catalogo della mostra. 1998. [italiano/ English ed. bilingue], 80 pp. with 59 color plates + 78 b/w ills.
Fairfield Porter: An American Classic, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York, 1992, 320 pp. with numerous color plates + b/w ills.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Taylor Branch "Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years 1963-65." Simon & Schuster 1998.
