Download Complete Vitae HERE (pdf)
EDUCATION
Ph.D., 2005 University of California, Berkeley, History of Art
Dissertation: “The Despair of the Physical: Matisse, Santayana and the Philosophical Temper of Modernism” (Committee: W. Davis, T. J. Clark, and M. Jay)
B.A., 1994 University of California, Berkeley, History of Art (with distinction), cum laude
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
2007– Assistant Professor, Twentieth Century Art, Department of Art History, Virginia Commonwealth University
2008, su Visiting Professor, Twentieth Century Art, University of California, Berkeley
2005–06 Visiting Professor, Twentieth Century Art, University of California, Berkeley
2003–05 Editor, Qui Parle, http://quiparle.berkeley.edu
SELECTED FELLOWSHIPS
2006–07 Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles
Research Project: The Authority of Things: The Cathedral Façade in Modernist Painting, 1890–1960
2004 Fletcher Jones Foundation Fellowship, Huntington Library, San Marino, CA
2000–01 Deutscher Akademische Austauschdienst, Berlin, Germany
1997–98 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship in Humanistic Studies, Northwestern University
Upcoming public lectures
“Intention and Interpretation,” panel co-chair, double session at College Art Association 98th Annual Conference, Chicago, February 2010. Speakers include Walter Benn Michaels, Stephen Melville, David Summers, Whitney Davis, Thierry de Duve, Claude Cernuschi, David McNeill, Akiko Walley and Michael Garral.
"Neuroaesthetics: For and Against," panel chair, double session, Pacific Division of the American Society for Aesthetics, April 2010.
Recent public lectures and panels chaired
“Matisse, Bergson, and the Pathology of Perception,” College Art Association Conference, 2009
“Matisse and Mimesis,” The College of William & Mary, 2008
“From Postmodernism to Modernism: Painting as Affect Machine,” Virginia Commonwealth University, 2008
“‘The Hypnotic Power of the Image’: Matisse and Mimesis,” Courtauld Institute of Art, 2008
“Monet After Impressionism,” Curator-Scholar Talk, J. Paul Getty Museum, 2007
“‘Irresistible Dictation’: Matisse and Personality,” College Art Association Conference, 2007
“The Authority of Things: The Cathedral Facade in Modernist Painting from Monet to Matisse” J. Paul Getty Research Institute, 2007
“Does the Psyche Exist?” Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy, 2006
“Georg Simmel’s Impressionism,” Harvard University, 2005
Co-Chair and Respondent, “Jackson Pollock’s Afterlife, 1956-2006,” College Art Association Conference, 2006
“The Pleasures of Merely Circulating: Matisse’s Woman Before an Aquarium and Wallace Stevens’s Harmonium,” College Art Association Conference, 2005
“Proust and Valéry at the Museum,” Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, 2005
“Winckelmann and the Lucretian Sublime,” International Society for Eighteenth Century Studies Conference, 2003
Chair and Respondent, “Schopenhauer’s Corps(e),” Modern Language Association Conference, San Diego, 2003
“The Rigors of Bildung in Schlegel, Heine, and the Brothers Grimm,” Yale University, 2002
“The Image in the Cathedral: Goethe After Benjamin,” Yale University, 2001
Major fields
> Modernism from Manet to Minimalism
> Form, affect and intentionality
Research Specializations
> Mimetic Theory from René Girard to Jean-Luc Nancy
> Phenomenology and Deconstruction
> Historical Materialism from Marx to Badiou
Major Projects
> Matisse, Bergson and the Philosophical Temper of Modernism
Who is the philosopher of Modernism? Hegel, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Sartre and Adorno are the prime candidates for the position. And yet we have to confront the fact that these are not the thinkers who shaped the practice of modern art. Whether we approve or not, the major artists of the twentieth century fed on everything except the major works of modern thought, turning instead to Theosophy, Neo-platonism, Zen Buddhism, Cabalism, Jungian archetypes, and other mystical philosophies for inspiration. While contemporary critics often ridicule these popular forms of thought, the fact remains that fashionable philosophies were a driving intellectual force behind modernism. Looking closely at the work of Matisse, I point to that role mysticism -- specifically trance, hypnotism, and psychic automatism -- played at the foundations of his practice, and again how the occult shaped modernism at large.
> I am currently completing a translation of French philosopher Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe's last book, Poétique de l’histoire (Éditions Galilée, 2002) for Fordham University Press.
> Paul Valéry: From Human Material to Reader Response
This study considers the dramatic shift in Valéry's account of artistic meaning. While his early career is devoted to an art of calculation and control, his later work is committed to a reader driven theory of affective experience. What shapes this turn and is there perhaps a deeper foundation that underlies both positions.
> The Poetics of Plasticity: Mid-Century Modernism in Los Angeles
This study traces the history of design theory in mid-century Los Angeles from the impact of Sullivan's Kindergarten Chats to Entenza's Case Study Program. Looking at the discourse and ideals of flexibility, plasticity, pliancy, and adaptability I explore the rise and decline of open planning in the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, R. M. Schindler, Richard Neutra, and the Case Study Program.
Select courses taught
Virginia Commonwealth University
Matisse & Picasso (seminar)
Impressionism: Beginnings and Endings (seminar)
Deconstruction in the Visual Arts (seminar)
Why Photography Matters Now (seminar)
Art in Paris, 1890-1920
Contemporary Art, 1963 to the present
Modern Art at Mid-Century, 1914-1963
University of California, Berkeley
From Mondrian to Minimalism: The Life and Death of Abstract Art, 1912-1970
Matisse & Picasso (seminar)
Modern Art and the Museum
Neoclassicism in Modern Art
School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Modern and Postmodern Art and Architecture (seminar)
Introduction to Art Theory
Navigate the titles below for publication details and downloads.
Matisse, Bergson and the Philosophical Temper of Modernism, forthcoming
Matisse, Basic Artists Series, Phaidon Books, 2010
"'Danger in the Smallest Dose': Richard Neutra's Design Theory," Design and Culture Journal, forthcoming
"Merleau-Ponty, Santayana and the Paradoxes of Animal Faith," British Journal for the History of Philosophy, Spring 2010
"Georg Simmel's Timeless Impressionism," New German Critique 106, pp. 83-101, 2009
"'Primordial Automatism': George Santayana's Later Aesthetics," Overheard in Seville 25, pp. 20-27, 2007
"Biological Poetry: George Santayana's Aesthetics," Essays in Criticism (Oxford, UK), forthcoming
"Shaken Realism," Review Essay of Michael Fried, Menzel's Realism, Zeitschrift fur Kunstgeschichte 4, pp. 578-92, 2006
"Looking Into Surfaces," in David D. Kim (ed.), Georg Simmel in Translation, Cambridge Scholars Press, pp. 229-61, 2006
Translation of Max Horkheimer, "Schopenhauer and Society," qui parle 15: 1, pp. 85-96, 2004
"On Max Horkheimer's 'Schopenhauer and Society,'" qui parle 15: 1, pp. 81-83, 2004
"Clement Greenberg's Last Book," qui parle 14: 2, pp. 205-12, 2004
"Shaken Realism," Review Essay of Michael Fried, Menzel's Realism, qui parle 14: 1, pp. 123-58, 2003
"Transparency and Mediation: On Frank Lloyd Wright's Utopian Imagination," Northwestern Journal of Art History, pp. 10-21, 2001