John Coplans
Encyclopedia
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
. A veteran of World War II and a photographer, he emigrated to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
in 1960 and had many exhibitions in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
and North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
. He was on the editorial staff of Artforum
Artforum
Artforum is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art.-Publication:The magazine is published ten times a year, September through May, along with an annual summer issue...
from 1962 to 1971, and was Editor-in-Chief from 1972 to 1977.
Artistic practice
Coplans is known for his series of black and white self-portraits which are a frank study of the naked, aging body. He photographed his body from the base of his foot to the wrinkles on his hand. As he never photographed his face, his images are not focused on a specific man or identity.Artforum
Coplans had a long affiliation with ArtforumArtforum
Artforum is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art.-Publication:The magazine is published ten times a year, September through May, along with an annual summer issue...
. He was there at the founding of the magazine, in San Francisco in 1962; he followed it, or it him, for sixteen years, down to Los Angeles, then, in 1967, to New York. With the departure in 1971 of Philip Leider, he became editor in chief, presiding over the tumultuous years that saw the core editorial group break apart into a handful of factions. Coplans's reign at Artforum was considered a time of editorial catholicity, reflecting a moment of expanding media, practices, and modes of engagement within contemporary art.
Curator
As a curator at the Pasadena Art Museum in the mid-'60s, Coplans was among the earliest champions of Pop art and a vociferously sympathetic critic of the work of Roy Lichtenstein and especially Andy Warhol. (He organized a survey of Pop as early as 1963 and later was responsible for retrospectives of Lichtenstein and Warhol as well as the 1968 "Serial ImagerySerial imagery
Serial imagery is a central idea of modern and contemporary art. The Impressionists and their contemporaries were the first to use it, for example Claude Monet in his Poplars, Haystacks or Rouen Cathedral....
" exhibition.) He also was director of the Akron Art Museum
Akron Art Museum
The Akron Art Museum is an art museum in Akron, Ohio, USA.The museum first opened its doors on February 1, 1922, as the Akron Art Institute. It was located in two borrowed rooms in the basement of the public library...
, Ohio
Ohio
Ohio is a Midwestern state in the United States. The 34th largest state by area in the U.S.,it is the 7th‑most populous with over 11.5 million residents, containing several major American cities and seven metropolitan areas with populations of 500,000 or more.The state's capital is Columbus...
beginning in 1978.