Thomas McEvilley

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Thomas McEvilley (born 1939, Cincinnati) is an American Art critic, poet, novelist, scholarly writer, who was distinguisted Professor of Art history at Rice University[1] and founder and former head of the department of Art Criticism and Writing at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.[2]

Contents

[edit] Biography

Tom McEvilley studied in the Classics program of the University of Cincinnati[1] where he received a B.A., and continued at the University of Washington, where he received a M.A..[3] He return to Cincinnati as a graduate student. He also retained a strong interest in modern art, reinforced by the modern artists of his acquaintance. McEvilley took a Ph.D. in Classical Philology. In addition to Greek and Latin, he has studied Sanskrit.

After receiving the PhD in classics McEvilley accepted an offer in 1969[4] from Rice University where he spent the better part of his career as a successful professor, and having a successful career as an author. He has been a visiting professor at Yale University and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, among others. He also taught numerous courses in Greek and Indian culture, history of religion and philosophy. In 2008 he retired from teaching after 41 years and lives in New York City and in upstate New York in the Catskills.

He has received various awards including the Semple Prize at the University of Cincinnati, a National Endowment for the Arts Critics grant, a Fulbright fellowship in 1993[4] and has been awarded an NEA critic’s grant and the Frank Jewett Mather Award for Distinction in Art Criticism by the College Art Association.

McEvilley has been a contributing editor of Artforum and editor in chief of Contemporanea.[3]

[edit] Work

McEvilley is an expert in the field of Greek and Indian culture, history of religion and philosophy, and art. He has published countless scholarly monographs and articles in various journals on early Greek poetry, philosophy, and religion as well as on contemporary art and culture.[4]

[edit] Toward a Redefinition of Painting for the Post-Modern Era

In his 1993 book "The Exile’s Return: Toward a Redefinition of Painting for the Post-Modern Era" McEvilley made an important contribution to the Late Twentieth Century "death of painting" debate. He stated that after two decades, painting revived around 1980. Its return from exile painting has assumed a new theoretical basis in postmodern cultural theory. In the light of "the mass disengangement with painting" this returned from exile was brought with a new kind of self-awareness and artist's interest in it own limitations. A number of contemporary artists such as Gerhard Richter and Glenn Brown demonstrate this new found self-reflexity and critical nature.[5]

[edit] Heads its Form, Tails it's not Content

In the article "Heads its Form, Tails it's not Content" McEvilley describes a theoretical framework of the formal project as presented by post-war critics Clement Greenberg, Michael Fried, and Sheldon Nodelman.[6]

He argues that formalist ideas are rooted in neoplatonism and as such deal with the problem of content by claiming that content is embedded within the form. However, the formalists desire a transcendentally free critique of art in the same way that Colin Rowe and Peter Eisenman explore the interiority of Architecture.

Formalism is based on a linguistic model which Claude Levi Strauss argues is given content through the unconscious. In presenting formalism, one cannot ignore the content which accompanies the form.

[edit] Sculpture in the Age of Doubt

The book "Sculpture in the Age of Doubt" (1999) McEvilley described the intellectual issues surrounding the postmodern movement in the course of 20th-century sculpture.

[edit] The Shape of Ancient Thought

In the "The Shape of Ancient Thought" McEvilley explores the foundations of Western civilization. He states that today’s Western world must be considered the product of both Greek and Indian thought Western philosophy and Eastern philosophies. In this book he explores how trade, imperialism, and migration currents allowed cultural philosophies to intermingle freely throughout India, Egypt, Greece, and the ancient Near East.

This book spans thirty years of McEvilley research, which he started as a student and wrote about from 1970 to 2000.[7]

[edit] See also

This section gives an overview of topics on which McEvilley has written:

[edit] Selected Publications

Thomas McEvilley is a scholar, critic, poet and novelist who has written several books and hundreds of articles, catalog essays, and reviews[1] on both ancient, modern and contemporary art[4] and culture: On early Greek poetry, philosophy, and religion as well as on contemporary art and culture.[2]

Books
  • 1987, North of Yesterday (a Menippean Satire)
  • 1991, Art and Discontent
  • 1992, Art and Otherness
  • 1993, Fusion: West African Artists at the Venice Biennale
  • 1993, The Exile’s Return: Toward a Redefinition of Painting for the Post-Modern Era
  • 1994, Der Erste Akt
  • 1999, Sculpture in the Age of Doubt
  • 2002, The Shape of Ancient Thought: Comparative Studies in Greek and Indian Philosophies
  • 2007, The Triumph of Anti-Art
  • 2008, Sappho
Essays
  • Heads It’s Form, Tails It’s Not Content (TKTK)
  • On the Manner of Addressing Clouds (TKTK)
  • The Monochrome Icon
  • “I Am” Is a Vain Thought
  • Art History or Sacred History?
  • Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief: ‘Primitivism’ in Twentieth-Century Art at the Museum of Modern Art
  • The Selfhood of the Other
  • Another Alphabet: The Work of Marcel Broodthaers
  • History, Quality, Globalism
  • Penelope’s Night Work: Negative Thinking in Greek Philosophy
  • Arrivederci, Venice: The Third World Biennials
  • The Tomb of the Zombie
  • Paul McCarthy: Performance and Video Works: the Layering (2008)
  • Here Comes Everybody (1994)
  • James Lee Byars and the Atmosphere of Question
Monographs

Thomas McEvilley wrote monographs on Yves Klein (1982), Pat Steir, Leon Golub (1993), Jannis Kounellis (1986), James Croak (1999), Dennis Oppenheim, Anselm Kiefer, Dove Bradshaw (2004).

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c Thomas McEvilley, G. Roger Denson (1996), Capacity: : History, the World, and the Self in Contemporary Art and Criticism. Routledge. ISBN 9057010518: This information is given on the backpage of this book.
  2. ^ a b McPherson & Company Publishers
  3. ^ a b School of VISUAL ARTS, graduate programs 2007-2008, Retrieved 4 April 2008.
  4. ^ a b c d Thomas McEvilley (2004). "Art and Cognition.". Slought Foundation Online Content. 11 December 2004, retrieved 4 april 2008
  5. ^ Victoria Reichelt (2005), Painting’s Wrongful Death: The revivalist practices of Glenn Brown, Institution Griffith University, retrieved 4 March 2008.
  6. ^ Thomas McEvilley (1996), "Heads its Form, Tails it's not Content", in: Artforum 21.3 ( Nov.1982) : 50-61. Later collected in: Capacity: The History, the World, and the Self in Contemporary Art and Criticism, by Thomas McEvilley and G.Roger Denson. Routledge: Taylor & Francis Group. ISBN 9057010518. Page 22-44.
  7. ^ McEvilley, Thomas (2002). The Shape of Ancient Thought. Allworth Communications, Inc.. ISBN 1581152035. 

[edit] External links