Robert Hobbs
Encyclopedia
Robert Carleton Hobbs is an art historian
and curator
specializing in twentieth century art. Since 1991 he has held the Rhoda Thalhimer Endowed Chair of American Art in the highly respected School of Arts, Virginia Commonwealth University
. Since 2004 he has served as a visiting professor at Yale University
. He has held positions at Cornell University
, University of Iowa
, Florida State University
, and Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art in Iran
, and is known for a number of books, in-depth essays, and exhibitions.
. His mother, Corinne Clay, was a coloratura soprano
with a repertoire in five languages.
While living in his family’s scenic retreat where the Tennessee Valley Authority
(T.V.A.) had been planned, Robert Hobbs enrolled in the early ‘60s in Maryville High School, which in the post-Sputnik era had a greater percentage of students attending M.I.T. than any other high school in the nation. During this time he was employed summers, running routine experiments in a chemical lab and acting in local college theatrical productions.
In 1969 Hobbs received his B.A. at the University of Tennessee
(Knoxville), working with Dale Cleaver, who was a student of Joshua Taylor, who in turn had studied with Heinrich Wölfflin
. In 1975 he was awarded a Ph.D. degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
. His dissertation director was philosopher, art historian, and poet Donald Kuspit
, who had been a student of the Frankfort School director Theodor Adorno. Combining philosophic, social history, and formalist views, Hobbs wrote a dissertation on Robert Motherwell
’s Elegies to the Spanish Republic while participating in the Whitney Museum of American Art
Independent Study Program. The next year, as a lecturer at Yale University, he lived in Motherwell’s guesthouse in Greenwich, Connecticut, and turned sections of his dissertation into essays for the catalogue that accompanied this artist’s first European retrospective.
, Hobbs co-curated in 1978 Abstract Expressionism: The Formative Years (with Gail Levin), which was jointly organized by Cornell’s Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art
and the Whitney Museum of American Art. This exhibition provided the first retrospective view of early Abstract Expressionism
and helped to redirect studies of the material away from the then predominantly formalist views of New York critic Clement Greenberg
.
In 1978 Hobbs took a leave of absence from Cornell in order to assume the position of Chief Curator of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art
and direct Farabi University’s museum affiliated program. Finding himself in the throes of a full-scale revolution, he was able to leave Tehran in December 1978, the last day before the airport closed.
Several years later, as an associate professor at Cornell, he curated the first retrospective of earth artist Robert Smithson
, which was shown at the Whitney in 1981. In addition to being presented in five United States’ venues, this exhibition was selected as the U.S. official representation for the 1982 Venice Biennale
, and it subsequently traveled to five European museums. An adjunct to this exhibition was Hobbs’ Cornell University Press monograph on Smithson’s sculpture, which has come to be regarded as a standard reference on this subject.
Hobbs became Director of the University of Iowa Museum of Art
in 1982. For this institution, he co-curated with Gaylord Torrence the first exhibition to look chronologically at a single American Indian tribe’s development. Entitled Art of the Red Earth People: The Mesquakie of Iowa, this exhibition and its co-authored catalogue surveyed 200 years of Mesquakie art history. While at the University of Iowa, Hobbs also brokered the gift of the important Stanley Collection of African Art
, oversaw the publication of this collection by Christopher D. Roy, and co-curated with Fredrick Woodard Human Rights, Human Wrongs: Art and Social Change: Essays by the Faculty of the University of Iowa, which showcased a wide range of disciplinary views of individual works of art that varied from neurologist António Damásio’s trenchant insights to Jorie Graham’s erudite and complex poetry.
In 1988 Hobbs returned to full-time teaching at Florida State University
, and in 1991 he accepted the Rhoda Thalhimer Endowed Chair at VCU. Since this time he has continued to work as both a scholar and a curator. Among his exhibitions are a retrospective of Lee Krasner
’s art, which opened at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
(LACMA) and traveled to the Brooklyn Museum
, and also a retrospective of Mark Lombardi
’s drawings, which was shown at New York City’s Drawing Center
and Toronto’s AGO. In addition, he curated the extensive group show Souls Grown Deep: African American Vernacular Art of the South and the one-person exhibition Thornton Dial
: Remembering the Road, which were both organized in conjunction with the Michael C. Carlos Museum
, Emory University
, in conjunction with the 1996 Cultural Olympiad in Atlanta. In 2002 his Kara Walker
exhibition Slavery! Slavery! became the U.S. official representation at the São Paulo Bienal.
Former students include Duchamp specialist Craig Adcock, Robert Ryman scholar Vittorio Colaizzi, filmmaker and artist Shelly Silver, biographer and New York Times critic Deborah Solomon, and New York abstract painter James Siena.
, Hernan Bas
, Duane Hanson
, Keith Haring
, Jonathan Lasker
, Mark Lindquist (sculptor)
, Malcolm Morley
, Robert Motherwell
, Beverly Pepper
, Richard Pousette-Dart
, Neo Rauch
, Andres Serrano
, Yinka Shonibare
, James Siena, Frank Stella
, Frank Thiel, Kara Walker
, Kelley Walker
, John Wesley
, and Kehinde Wiley
, among others.
His “Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology and Installation Art” (2001) for the Mattress Factory
discerns relations between this philosopher’s thought and Harold Rosenberg
’s criticism, and it underscores the impact of both on the development of installation art
in the late 1950s, thus demonstrating how this French philosopher’s ideas were important to New York artists over a decade before the advent of Robert Morris
’s minimalism
.
His “Affluence, Taste, and the Brokering of Knowledge: Notes on the Social Context of Early Conceptual Art” looks at the social history of collecting and taste as well as the tremendous respect for education in the 1950s and early ‘60s that helped to prepare the way for the rapid and relatively widespread acceptance of conceptual art
in the 1960s.
Hobbs has written in-depth essays for the Rubell Collection (Miami), including a historical overview, entitled “Looking B(l)ack: Reflections of White Racism” (for the well-received exhibition 30 Americans) that looks at the challenges, goals, and sensibilities facing African-American artists from the 1980s to the present.
, David Ireland
, Alfredo Jaar
, Sherrie Levine
, Kay Rosen http://www.yvon-lambert.com/kay_rosen-A52.html, and Lorna Simpson
. Since their marriage, Crutchfield co-curated The Art of Aggression, and she has curated Presumed Innocence, as well as one-person shows of the work of Diana Cooper, Gregory Crewdson
(first museum showing), Yoko Ono
, and Monique Prieto (first museum showing)], in addition to continuing to serve as a fine arts consultant.
See http://www.roberthobbs.net for a complete list, as well as for excerpts from books and essays.
Links to publishers are listed below; to find the books you can also go to http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=robert+hobbs&x=20&y=23
2009
Robert Hobbs, Matthew Collings, Mel Gooding and Robert Motherwell. Open. London: 21 Publishing Ltd., 2009. http://www.21publishing.com/21pub/
Robert Hobbs, Jorg Heiser, Alessandro Rabottini and Sterling Ruby. Sterling Ruby. Bergamo: Galleria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea of Bergamo, 2009. http://www.gamec.it/
2008
Robert Hobbs and Rachel Kent, Yinka Shonibare, MBE. New York: Prestel, 2008. http://www.prestel.com
2005
Alice Aycock: Sculpture and Projects. Cambridge and London: M.I.T. Press, 2005. http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/author/default.asp?aid=26061
2003
Mark Lombardi: Global Networks. New York: Independent Curators International in conjunction with D.A.P., 2003. http://www.amazon.com/Mark-Lombardi-Networks-Robert-Hobbs/dp/0916365670
2001
Milton Avery: The Late Paintings. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, 2001. http://www.abramsbooks.com/templates/book-search.aspx?v=robert%20hobbs&d=2
1999
Lee Krasner. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, 1999. http://www.abramsbooks.com/templates/book-search.aspx?v=robert%20hobbs&d=2
1995
Beatrice Mandelman: Taos Modernist. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995. http://www.unmpress.com/
1991
Lee Krasner. New York: Abbeville Press, 1993. http://www.abbeville.com/booksinsubj_new.asp?subj=SEARCH
1990
Milton Avery. New York: Hudson Hills Press, Inc., 1990. http://www.hudsonhills.com/search_results.php?search_type=author&search=robert+hobbs&x=0&y=0
Robert Hobbs and Joanne Kuebler. Richard Pousette-Dart. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990. http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/catalog/advanced_search_result.php?search_by=category_id%3A1037&keywords=robert+hobbs&inc_subcat=1&search_in_description=1&x=0&y=0
1989
Gaylord Torrence and Robert Hobbs. Art of the Red Earth People: The Mesquakie of Iowa. Iowa City: The University of Iowa Museum of Art, 1989. http://www.uipress.uiowa.edu/
1987
Edward Hopper. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, in association with National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 1987. http://www.abramsbooks.com/templates/book-search.aspx?v=robert%20hobbs&d=2
1982
Robert Smithson: A Retrospective View. Washington, D.C.: The United States International Communications Agency, 1982.
1981
Robert Smithson: Sculpture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981. http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/
Robert Hobbs and Gail Levin. Abstract Expressionism: The Formative Years. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1978. [Republished by Cornell University Press, 1981.] http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/
1976
Robert Motherwell Retrospective. Düsseldorf: Städische Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, 1976.
Selected essays and articles by Hobbs
See http://www.roberthobbs.net for a complete list, as well as for complete essays.
2009
“Motherwell’s Open: Heidegger, Mallarmé, and Zen.” Robert Hobbs, Matthew Collings, Mel Gooding and Robert Motherwell. Open. London: 21 Publishing Ltd., 2009. http://www.21publishing.com/21pub/
“Sterling Ruby’s Post-Humanist Art.” Robert Hobbs, Jorg Heiser, Alessandro Rabottini and Sterling Ruby. Sterling Ruby. Bergamo: Galleria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea of Bergamo, 2009. http://www.gamec.it/
2008
"Form is a Verb: Pousette-Dart and Vorticism." Pousette-Dart Drawing: Form is a Verb. New York: Knoedler & Company, 2008. http://www.knoedlergallery.com/
2007
"Hernan Bas' 'Fag Limbo' and the Tactics of Reframing Societal Texts." Mark Coetzee. Hernan Bas: Works from the Rubell Family Collection. Miami: Rubell Family Collection, 2007. http://www.rfc.museum/
“Kelley Walker’s Continuum: Consuming and Recycling as Aesthetic Tactics.” Suzanne Cotter, ed., Seth Price/Kelley Walker: Continuous Project. Oxford, UK: Modern Art Oxford, 2007. http://www.modernartoxford.org.uk/
"Lee Krasner's Skepticism and Her Emergent Postmodernism." Woman's Art Journal 28, No. 2 (Fall/Winter 2007). http://www.womansartjournal.org/
“Robert Beck’s Dust.” Bill Horrigan, Helen Molesworth, and Robert Hobbs, Robert Beck: Dust. Columbus: Wexner Center for the Arts, 2007. wexner center for the arts
2005
“Malcolm Morley: The Art of Painting.” Malcolm Morley. New York: Sperone, Westwater, 2005. http://www.speronewestwater.com/cgi-bin/iowa/index.html
“Robert Motherwell’s Elegies to the Spanish Republic,” 1976 (revised 2004). Ellen G. Landau, ed., Reading Abstract Expressionism: Context and Critique. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005. http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/home.asp
“Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism: From Psychic to Plastic Automatism.” Isabelle Dervaux, Surrealism USA. New York: National Academy Museum http://www.nationalacademy.org in conjunction with Hatje Cantz Publishers, 2005. http://www.hatjecantz.de/en_index.php
“The Term ‘Color Field.” The Shape of Colour. Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 2005. http://www.ago.net/
“Neo Rauch’s Purposive Ambiguities” in Neo Rauch. Málaga, Spain: CAC Málaga, 2005. http://www.cacmalaga.org/inicio.htm
2004
“Affluence, Taste, and the Brokering of Knowledge: Notes on the Social context of Early Conceptual Art.” Michael Corris, ed., Conceptual Art: Theory, Myth, and Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. http://www.cambridge.org/us/
2003
“Jonathan Lasker’s Dramatis Personae.” Jonathan Lasker: Paintings, Drawings, Studies. Madrid: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in co-production with K20 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, 2003. http://www.spanisharts.com/reinasofia/reinasofia.htm and http://www.kunstsammlung.de/
“Pierre Huyghe’s Ellipses.” Parkett 66 (Fall, 2003). http://www.parkettart.com/index3.htm
"Reading Black Through White: Kara Walker and the Question of Racial Stereotyping: A Discussion between Michael Corris and Robert Hobbs." Art History 26, no. 3 (June 2003); rpt. in Gill Perry, ed., Differences and Excess in Contemporary Art: The Visibility of Women's Practices. Oxford: Blackwell, 2004. http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/
2002
“Frank Stella, Then and Now.” Frank Stella: Recent Work. Singapore: Singapore Tyler Print Institute, 2002. http://www.stpi.com.sg/
2001
“Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology and Installation Art.” Claudia Giannini, ed., Installations Mattress Factory 1990-1999. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001. http://www.mattress.org/
2000
“Frank Stella: Matrixed and Real Space.” Frank Stella. Philadelphia: Locks Gallery, 2000. http://www.locksgallery.com/
1988
“Sally Michel: The Other Avery.” Woman's Art Journal 8 (Fall 1987/Winter 1988). http://www.womansartjournal.org/
Art history
Art history has historically been understood as the academic study of objects of art in their historical development and stylistic contexts, i.e. genre, design, format, and style...
and curator
Curator
A curator is a manager or overseer. Traditionally, a curator or keeper of a cultural heritage institution is a content specialist responsible for an institution's collections and involved with the interpretation of heritage material...
specializing in twentieth century art. Since 1991 he has held the Rhoda Thalhimer Endowed Chair of American Art in the highly respected School of Arts, Virginia Commonwealth University
Virginia Commonwealth University
Virginia Commonwealth University is a public university located in Richmond, Virginia. It comprises two campuses in the Downtown Richmond area, the product of a merger between the Richmond Professional Institute and the Medical College of Virginia in 1968...
. Since 2004 he has served as a visiting professor at Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
. He has held positions at Cornell University
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
, University of Iowa
University of Iowa
The University of Iowa is a public state-supported research university located in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. It is the oldest public university in the state. The university is organized into eleven colleges granting undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees...
, Florida State University
Florida State University
The Florida State University is a space-grant and sea-grant public university located in Tallahassee, Florida, United States. It is a comprehensive doctoral research university with medical programs and significant research activity as determined by the Carnegie Foundation...
, and Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art in Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
, and is known for a number of books, in-depth essays, and exhibitions.
Early life
Born in 1946, Hobbs is the son of scientist Charles S. Hobbs, who is best known for conducting the primary research on fluorine and teeth as well as investigating, over a thirty-year period, the residual genetic effects of the nuclear fallout on beef cattle found within a 150-mile radius of Los AlamosLos Alamos, New Mexico
Los Alamos is a townsite and census-designated place in Los Alamos County, New Mexico, United States, built upon four mesas of the Pajarito Plateau and the adjoining White Rock Canyon. The population of the CDP was 12,019 at the 2010 Census. The townsite or "the hill" is one part of town while...
. His mother, Corinne Clay, was a coloratura soprano
Coloratura soprano
A coloratura soprano is a type of operatic soprano who specializes in music that is distinguished by agile runs and leaps. The term coloratura refers to the elaborate ornamentation of a melody, which is a typical component of the music written for this voice...
with a repertoire in five languages.
While living in his family’s scenic retreat where the Tennessee Valley Authority
Tennessee Valley Authority
The Tennessee Valley Authority is a federally owned corporation in the United States created by congressional charter in May 1933 to provide navigation, flood control, electricity generation, fertilizer manufacturing, and economic development in the Tennessee Valley, a region particularly affected...
(T.V.A.) had been planned, Robert Hobbs enrolled in the early ‘60s in Maryville High School, which in the post-Sputnik era had a greater percentage of students attending M.I.T. than any other high school in the nation. During this time he was employed summers, running routine experiments in a chemical lab and acting in local college theatrical productions.
In 1969 Hobbs received his B.A. at the University of Tennessee
University of Tennessee
The University of Tennessee is a public land-grant university headquartered at Knoxville, Tennessee, United States...
(Knoxville), working with Dale Cleaver, who was a student of Joshua Taylor, who in turn had studied with Heinrich Wölfflin
Heinrich Wölfflin
Heinrich Wölfflin was a famous Swiss art critic, whose objective classifying principles were influential in the development of formal analysis in the history of art during the 20th century. He taught at Basel, Berlin and Munich in the generation that raised German art history to pre-eminence...
. In 1975 he was awarded a Ph.D. degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is a public research university located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States...
. His dissertation director was philosopher, art historian, and poet Donald Kuspit
Donald Kuspit
Donald Kuspit is an American art critic, poet, and Distinguished Professor of art history and philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and professor of art history at the School of Visual Arts. Kuspit is one of America's most distinguished art critics. He was formerly the A....
, who had been a student of the Frankfort School director Theodor Adorno. Combining philosophic, social history, and formalist views, Hobbs wrote a dissertation on Robert Motherwell
Robert Motherwell
Robert Motherwell American painter, printmaker and editor. He was one of the youngest of the New York School , which also included Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, and Philip Guston....
’s Elegies to the Spanish Republic while participating in the Whitney Museum of American Art
Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...
Independent Study Program. The next year, as a lecturer at Yale University, he lived in Motherwell’s guesthouse in Greenwich, Connecticut, and turned sections of his dissertation into essays for the catalogue that accompanied this artist’s first European retrospective.
Academic career
After accepting the position of assistant professor at Cornell UniversityCornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
, Hobbs co-curated in 1978 Abstract Expressionism: The Formative Years (with Gail Levin), which was jointly organized by Cornell’s Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art
Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art
The Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art is an art museum located on the northwest corner of the Arts Quad on the main campus of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. It is most well known for its distinctive concrete facade, its collection which includes two windows from Frank Lloyd Wright's Darwin...
and the Whitney Museum of American Art. This exhibition provided the first retrospective view of early Abstract Expressionism
Abstract expressionism
Abstract expressionism was an American post–World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris...
and helped to redirect studies of the material away from the then predominantly formalist views of New York critic Clement Greenberg
Clement Greenberg
Clement Greenberg was an American essayist known mainly as an influential visual art critic closely associated with American Modern art of the mid-20th century...
.
In 1978 Hobbs took a leave of absence from Cornell in order to assume the position of Chief Curator of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art
Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art
Tehran's Museum of Contemporary Art is an art museum in Tehran, Iran.Inaugurated in 1977, and built adjacent to Tehran's Laleh Park, the museum was designed by Iranian architect Kamran Diba, who employed elements from traditional Persian architecture. The building can be listed as a contemporary...
and direct Farabi University’s museum affiliated program. Finding himself in the throes of a full-scale revolution, he was able to leave Tehran in December 1978, the last day before the airport closed.
Several years later, as an associate professor at Cornell, he curated the first retrospective of earth artist Robert Smithson
Robert Smithson
Robert Smithson was an American artist famous for his land art.-Background and education:Smithson was born in Passaic, New Jersey and studied painting and drawing in New York City at the Art Students League of New York....
, which was shown at the Whitney in 1981. In addition to being presented in five United States’ venues, this exhibition was selected as the U.S. official representation for the 1982 Venice Biennale
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...
, and it subsequently traveled to five European museums. An adjunct to this exhibition was Hobbs’ Cornell University Press monograph on Smithson’s sculpture, which has come to be regarded as a standard reference on this subject.
Hobbs became Director of the University of Iowa Museum of Art
University of Iowa Museum of Art
The University of Iowa Museum of Art is a visual arts institution that is part of the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa, USA.-Introduction:The University of Iowa Museum of Art, established in 1969, has one of the top university art collections in the country...
in 1982. For this institution, he co-curated with Gaylord Torrence the first exhibition to look chronologically at a single American Indian tribe’s development. Entitled Art of the Red Earth People: The Mesquakie of Iowa, this exhibition and its co-authored catalogue surveyed 200 years of Mesquakie art history. While at the University of Iowa, Hobbs also brokered the gift of the important Stanley Collection of African Art
African art
African art constitutes one of the most diverse legacies on earth. Though many casual observers tend to generalize "traditional" African art, the continent is full of people, societies, and civilizations, each with a unique visual special culture. The definition also includes the art of the African...
, oversaw the publication of this collection by Christopher D. Roy, and co-curated with Fredrick Woodard Human Rights, Human Wrongs: Art and Social Change: Essays by the Faculty of the University of Iowa, which showcased a wide range of disciplinary views of individual works of art that varied from neurologist António Damásio’s trenchant insights to Jorie Graham’s erudite and complex poetry.
In 1988 Hobbs returned to full-time teaching at Florida State University
Florida State University
The Florida State University is a space-grant and sea-grant public university located in Tallahassee, Florida, United States. It is a comprehensive doctoral research university with medical programs and significant research activity as determined by the Carnegie Foundation...
, and in 1991 he accepted the Rhoda Thalhimer Endowed Chair at VCU. Since this time he has continued to work as both a scholar and a curator. Among his exhibitions are a retrospective of Lee Krasner
Lee Krasner
Lee Krasner was an influential abstract expressionist painter in the second half of the 20th century. On October 25, 1945, she married artist Jackson Pollock, who was also influential in the Abstract Expressionism movement....
’s art, which opened at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is an art museum in Los Angeles, California. It is located on Wilshire Boulevard along Museum Row in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles, adjacent to the George C. Page Museum and La Brea Tar Pits....
(LACMA) and traveled to the Brooklyn Museum
Brooklyn Museum
The Brooklyn Museum is an encyclopedia art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At 560,000 square feet, the museum holds New York City's second largest art collection with roughly 1.5 million works....
, and also a retrospective of Mark Lombardi
Mark Lombardi
Mark Lombardi was an American Neo-Conceptualist and an abstract artist who specialized in drawings attempting to document financial and political frauds by power brokers, and in general 'the uses and abuses of power'.- Biography :...
’s drawings, which was shown at New York City’s Drawing Center
Drawing Center
The Drawing Center is a SoHo museum and the only nonprofit exhibition space in the United States to focus solely on the exhibition of drawings, both historical and contemporary.- Location and activities :...
and Toronto’s AGO. In addition, he curated the extensive group show Souls Grown Deep: African American Vernacular Art of the South and the one-person exhibition Thornton Dial
Thornton Dial
Thornton Dial is an artist who came to prominence in the United States in the late 1980s. He was one of 12 children and grew up poor and without his father's presence in the family, and this poverty led him and his siblings to create toys from the discarded objects around them...
: Remembering the Road, which were both organized in conjunction with the Michael C. Carlos Museum
Michael C. Carlos Museum
The Michael C. Carlos Museum is an art museum located in Atlanta on the historic quadrangle of Emory University's main campus. The Carlos Museum has the largest ancient art collections in the Southeast, including objects from ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, the Near East, and the ancient Americas...
, Emory University
Emory University
Emory University is a private research university in metropolitan Atlanta, located in the Druid Hills section of unincorporated DeKalb County, Georgia, United States. The university was founded as Emory College in 1836 in Oxford, Georgia by a small group of Methodists and was named in honor of...
, in conjunction with the 1996 Cultural Olympiad in Atlanta. In 2002 his Kara Walker
Kara Walker
Kara Walker is a contemporary African American artist who explores race, gender, sexuality, violence and identity in her work. She is best known for her room-size tableaux of black cut-paper silhouettes, such as The Means to an End--A Shadow Drama in Five Acts.-Biography:Walker was born in...
exhibition Slavery! Slavery! became the U.S. official representation at the São Paulo Bienal.
Former students include Duchamp specialist Craig Adcock, Robert Ryman scholar Vittorio Colaizzi, filmmaker and artist Shelly Silver, biographer and New York Times critic Deborah Solomon, and New York abstract painter James Siena.
Publications
Hobbs has continued to write extensively on modern and postmodern art, including investigations of the work of the following artists (listed alphabetically): Alice AycockAlice Aycock
-Biography:Aycock studied at Douglass College in New Brunswick, New Jersey, graduating with a bachelor of arts degree in 1968. She then went to New York City where she studied for her masters at Hunter College, and where she was taught and supervised by Robert Morris; she graduated in 1971...
, Hernan Bas
Hernan Bas
Hernan Bas is an artist based in Florida. He graduated in 1996 from the New World School of the Arts in Miami....
, Duane Hanson
Duane Hanson
Duane Hanson was an American artist based in South Florida but born in Minnesota, a sculptor known for his lifecast realistic works of people, cast in various materials, including polyester resin, fibreglass, Bondo and bronze...
, Keith Haring
Keith Haring
Keith Haring was an artist and social activist whose work responded to the New York City street culture of the 1980s.-Early life:...
, Jonathan Lasker
Jonathan Lasker
Jonathan Lasker is an American artist.Lasker was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, and attended the School of Visual Arts in New York City as well as California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California....
, Mark Lindquist (sculptor)
Mark Lindquist (sculptor)
Mark Lindquist is an American sculptor in wood, artist, author, and photographer. Lindquist is a major figure in the redirection and resurgence of woodturning in the United States beginning in the early 1970s...
, Malcolm Morley
Malcolm Morley
Malcolm Morley is an English artist now living in the United States. He is best known as a photorealist.-Early life:Morley was born in north London. He had a troubled childhood, and did not discover art until serving a three-year stint in Wormwood Scrubs prison...
, Robert Motherwell
Robert Motherwell
Robert Motherwell American painter, printmaker and editor. He was one of the youngest of the New York School , which also included Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, and Philip Guston....
, Beverly Pepper
Beverly Pepper
Beverly Pepper is a pioneering sculptor known for her monumental works,site specific and land art. She remains independent from any particular art movement.- Early Life and Education :...
, Richard Pousette-Dart
Richard Pousette-Dart
Richard Pousette-Dart was an American Abstract Expressionist painter.-Biography:He was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota and grew up in Valhalla, New York. Although Richard never attended art school, his father, Nathaniel J. Pousette-Dart, was a painter and writer on art. He moved to Manhattan in 1937...
, Neo Rauch
Neo Rauch
Neo Rauch is a German artist whose paintings mine the intersection of his personal history with the politics of industrial alienation. His work reflects the influence of socialist realism, and owes a debt to Surrealists Giorgio de Chirico and René Magritte, although Rauch hesitates to align...
, Andres Serrano
Andres Serrano
Andres Serrano is an American photographer and artist who has become notorious through his photos of corpses and his use of feces and bodily fluids in his work, notably his controversial work "Piss Christ", a red-tinged photograph of a crucifix submerged in a glass container of what was purported...
, Yinka Shonibare
Yinka Shonibare
Yinka Shonibare, MBE, is a British-Nigerian artist living in the UK. He readily acknowledges physical disability as part of his identity but creates work in which this is just one strand of a far richer weave.-Life and career:...
, James Siena, Frank Stella
Frank Stella
Frank Stella is an American painter and printmaker, significant within the art movements of minimalism and post-painterly abstraction.-Biography:...
, Frank Thiel, Kara Walker
Kara Walker
Kara Walker is a contemporary African American artist who explores race, gender, sexuality, violence and identity in her work. She is best known for her room-size tableaux of black cut-paper silhouettes, such as The Means to an End--A Shadow Drama in Five Acts.-Biography:Walker was born in...
, Kelley Walker
Kelley Walker
Kelley Walker is an American artist.Walker graduated with a BFA from the University of Tennessee in 1995.Walker’s work has been shown internationally at galleries and museums including the Museo de Arte Contemporanea de Vigo in Spain, the New Langton Center for the Arts in San Francisco, and FRAC...
, John Wesley
John Wesley
John Wesley was a Church of England cleric and Christian theologian. Wesley is largely credited, along with his brother Charles Wesley, as founding the Methodist movement which began when he took to open-air preaching in a similar manner to George Whitefield...
, and Kehinde Wiley
Kehinde Wiley
Kehinde Wiley is a New York-based portrait painter, who is known for his highly naturalistic paintings of contemporary urban African, African-American, Afro-Brazilian, Indian and Ethiopian-Jewish men in heroic poses.-Early life:...
, among others.
His “Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology and Installation Art” (2001) for the Mattress Factory
Mattress Factory
The Mattress Factory is a museum of contemporary art located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. It exhibits room-sized installation art by regional, national and international artists....
discerns relations between this philosopher’s thought and Harold Rosenberg
Harold Rosenberg
Harold Rosenberg was an American writer, educator, philosopher and art critic. He coined the term Action Painting in 1952 for what was later to be known as abstract expressionism. The term was first employed in Rosenberg's essay "American Action Painters" published in the December 1952 issue of...
’s criticism, and it underscores the impact of both on the development of installation art
Installation art
Installation art describes an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often called Land art; however, the boundaries between...
in the late 1950s, thus demonstrating how this French philosopher’s ideas were important to New York artists over a decade before the advent of Robert Morris
Robert Morris (artist)
Robert Morris is an American sculptor, conceptual artist and writer. He is regarded as one of the most prominent theorists of Minimalism along with Donald Judd but he has also made important contributions to the development of performance art, land art, the Process Art movement and installation...
’s minimalism
Minimalism
Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is set out to expose the essence, essentials or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or concepts...
.
His “Affluence, Taste, and the Brokering of Knowledge: Notes on the Social Context of Early Conceptual Art” looks at the social history of collecting and taste as well as the tremendous respect for education in the 1950s and early ‘60s that helped to prepare the way for the rapid and relatively widespread acceptance of conceptual art
Conceptual art
Conceptual art is art in which the concept or idea involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called installations, of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions...
in the 1960s.
Hobbs has written in-depth essays for the Rubell Collection (Miami), including a historical overview, entitled “Looking B(l)ack: Reflections of White Racism” (for the well-received exhibition 30 Americans) that looks at the challenges, goals, and sensibilities facing African-American artists from the 1980s to the present.
Personal life
In 1994 Hobbs married Jean Crutchfield, who had established a reputation for directing cutting-edge galleries in New York, Chicago, and Paris. [Having grown up in Geneva, Switzerland where she attended the International School, she is fluent in French.] She has worked closely with such artists as Alice Aycock, Christian BoltanskiChristian Boltanski
Christian Boltanski is French sculptor, photographer, painter and film maker.-Life and work:Having no formal art education, he began painting in 1958. Nevertheless, he first came to public attention in 1960 with few short films and publication of several notebooks...
, David Ireland
David Ireland (artist)
David Kenneth Ireland was an American artist and co-founder of the artist residency.Born in Bellingham, Washington, he studied Printmaking and Industrial Arts at California College of Arts and Crafts, prior to joining the Army in the early 1950s...
, Alfredo Jaar
Alfredo Jaar
Alfredo Jaar is a Chilean-born artist, architect, and filmmaker who lives in New York. He was born in 1956 in Santiago de Chile. He is mostly known as an installation artist, often incorporating photography and covering socio-political issues and war - the best known perhaps being the 6-year long...
, Sherrie Levine
Sherrie Levine
Sherrie Levine is an American photographer and appropriation artist.-Education:Levine received her B.A. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1969. In 1973, she earned an M.F.A. from the same institution....
, Kay Rosen http://www.yvon-lambert.com/kay_rosen-A52.html, and Lorna Simpson
Lorna Simpson
Lorna Simpson is an African American artist and photographer who made her name in the 1980s and 1990s with artworks such as Guarded Conditions and Square Deal. Her work often portrays black women combined with text to express contemporary society's relationship with race, ethnicity and sex...
. Since their marriage, Crutchfield co-curated The Art of Aggression, and she has curated Presumed Innocence, as well as one-person shows of the work of Diana Cooper, Gregory Crewdson
Gregory Crewdson
Gregory Crewdson is an American photographer who is best known for elaborately staged scenes of American homes and neighborhoods.-Life and career:Crewdson was born in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY...
(first museum showing), Yoko Ono
Yoko Ono
is a Japanese artist, musician, author and peace activist, known for her work in avant-garde art, music and filmmaking as well as her marriage to John Lennon...
, and Monique Prieto (first museum showing)], in addition to continuing to serve as a fine arts consultant.
Selected bibliography
Selected Books and Catalogues by HobbsSee http://www.roberthobbs.net for a complete list, as well as for excerpts from books and essays.
Links to publishers are listed below; to find the books you can also go to http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=robert+hobbs&x=20&y=23
2009
Robert Hobbs, Matthew Collings, Mel Gooding and Robert Motherwell. Open. London: 21 Publishing Ltd., 2009. http://www.21publishing.com/21pub/
Robert Hobbs, Jorg Heiser, Alessandro Rabottini and Sterling Ruby. Sterling Ruby. Bergamo: Galleria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea of Bergamo, 2009. http://www.gamec.it/
2008
Robert Hobbs and Rachel Kent, Yinka Shonibare, MBE. New York: Prestel, 2008. http://www.prestel.com
2005
Alice Aycock: Sculpture and Projects. Cambridge and London: M.I.T. Press, 2005. http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/author/default.asp?aid=26061
2003
Mark Lombardi: Global Networks. New York: Independent Curators International in conjunction with D.A.P., 2003. http://www.amazon.com/Mark-Lombardi-Networks-Robert-Hobbs/dp/0916365670
2001
Milton Avery: The Late Paintings. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, 2001. http://www.abramsbooks.com/templates/book-search.aspx?v=robert%20hobbs&d=2
1999
Lee Krasner. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, 1999. http://www.abramsbooks.com/templates/book-search.aspx?v=robert%20hobbs&d=2
1995
Beatrice Mandelman: Taos Modernist. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995. http://www.unmpress.com/
1991
Lee Krasner. New York: Abbeville Press, 1993. http://www.abbeville.com/booksinsubj_new.asp?subj=SEARCH
1990
Milton Avery. New York: Hudson Hills Press, Inc., 1990. http://www.hudsonhills.com/search_results.php?search_type=author&search=robert+hobbs&x=0&y=0
Robert Hobbs and Joanne Kuebler. Richard Pousette-Dart. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990. http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/catalog/advanced_search_result.php?search_by=category_id%3A1037&keywords=robert+hobbs&inc_subcat=1&search_in_description=1&x=0&y=0
1989
Gaylord Torrence and Robert Hobbs. Art of the Red Earth People: The Mesquakie of Iowa. Iowa City: The University of Iowa Museum of Art, 1989. http://www.uipress.uiowa.edu/
1987
Edward Hopper. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, in association with National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 1987. http://www.abramsbooks.com/templates/book-search.aspx?v=robert%20hobbs&d=2
1982
Robert Smithson: A Retrospective View. Washington, D.C.: The United States International Communications Agency, 1982.
1981
Robert Smithson: Sculpture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981. http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/
Robert Hobbs and Gail Levin. Abstract Expressionism: The Formative Years. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1978. [Republished by Cornell University Press, 1981.] http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/
1976
Robert Motherwell Retrospective. Düsseldorf: Städische Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, 1976.
Selected essays and articles by Hobbs
See http://www.roberthobbs.net for a complete list, as well as for complete essays.
2009
“Motherwell’s Open: Heidegger, Mallarmé, and Zen.” Robert Hobbs, Matthew Collings, Mel Gooding and Robert Motherwell. Open. London: 21 Publishing Ltd., 2009. http://www.21publishing.com/21pub/
“Sterling Ruby’s Post-Humanist Art.” Robert Hobbs, Jorg Heiser, Alessandro Rabottini and Sterling Ruby. Sterling Ruby. Bergamo: Galleria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea of Bergamo, 2009. http://www.gamec.it/
2008
"Form is a Verb: Pousette-Dart and Vorticism." Pousette-Dart Drawing: Form is a Verb. New York: Knoedler & Company, 2008. http://www.knoedlergallery.com/
2007
"Hernan Bas' 'Fag Limbo' and the Tactics of Reframing Societal Texts." Mark Coetzee. Hernan Bas: Works from the Rubell Family Collection. Miami: Rubell Family Collection, 2007. http://www.rfc.museum/
“Kelley Walker’s Continuum: Consuming and Recycling as Aesthetic Tactics.” Suzanne Cotter, ed., Seth Price/Kelley Walker: Continuous Project. Oxford, UK: Modern Art Oxford, 2007. http://www.modernartoxford.org.uk/
"Lee Krasner's Skepticism and Her Emergent Postmodernism." Woman's Art Journal 28, No. 2 (Fall/Winter 2007). http://www.womansartjournal.org/
“Robert Beck’s Dust.” Bill Horrigan, Helen Molesworth, and Robert Hobbs, Robert Beck: Dust. Columbus: Wexner Center for the Arts, 2007. wexner center for the arts
2005
“Malcolm Morley: The Art of Painting.” Malcolm Morley. New York: Sperone, Westwater, 2005. http://www.speronewestwater.com/cgi-bin/iowa/index.html
“Robert Motherwell’s Elegies to the Spanish Republic,” 1976 (revised 2004). Ellen G. Landau, ed., Reading Abstract Expressionism: Context and Critique. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005. http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/home.asp
“Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism: From Psychic to Plastic Automatism.” Isabelle Dervaux, Surrealism USA. New York: National Academy Museum http://www.nationalacademy.org in conjunction with Hatje Cantz Publishers, 2005. http://www.hatjecantz.de/en_index.php
“The Term ‘Color Field.” The Shape of Colour. Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 2005. http://www.ago.net/
“Neo Rauch’s Purposive Ambiguities” in Neo Rauch. Málaga, Spain: CAC Málaga, 2005. http://www.cacmalaga.org/inicio.htm
2004
“Affluence, Taste, and the Brokering of Knowledge: Notes on the Social context of Early Conceptual Art.” Michael Corris, ed., Conceptual Art: Theory, Myth, and Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. http://www.cambridge.org/us/
2003
“Jonathan Lasker’s Dramatis Personae.” Jonathan Lasker: Paintings, Drawings, Studies. Madrid: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in co-production with K20 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, 2003. http://www.spanisharts.com/reinasofia/reinasofia.htm and http://www.kunstsammlung.de/
“Pierre Huyghe’s Ellipses.” Parkett 66 (Fall, 2003). http://www.parkettart.com/index3.htm
"Reading Black Through White: Kara Walker and the Question of Racial Stereotyping: A Discussion between Michael Corris and Robert Hobbs." Art History 26, no. 3 (June 2003); rpt. in Gill Perry, ed., Differences and Excess in Contemporary Art: The Visibility of Women's Practices. Oxford: Blackwell, 2004. http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/
2002
“Frank Stella, Then and Now.” Frank Stella: Recent Work. Singapore: Singapore Tyler Print Institute, 2002. http://www.stpi.com.sg/
2001
“Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology and Installation Art.” Claudia Giannini, ed., Installations Mattress Factory 1990-1999. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001. http://www.mattress.org/
2000
“Frank Stella: Matrixed and Real Space.” Frank Stella. Philadelphia: Locks Gallery, 2000. http://www.locksgallery.com/
1988
“Sally Michel: The Other Avery.” Woman's Art Journal 8 (Fall 1987/Winter 1988). http://www.womansartjournal.org/