John Curley
Wake Forest University, Art History, Faculty Member
- John Curley (Duke University, A.B.; Yale University, Ph.D) teaches courses in twentieth and twenty-first century Amer... moreJohn Curley (Duke University, A.B.; Yale University, Ph.D) teaches courses in twentieth and twenty-first century American and European art, as well as the history of photography. His research explores the ways that postwar art in both the United States and Europe intervenes into larger realms of visuaity, the mass media, and politics, especially during the period of the Cold War. These concerns are addressed in his first book: "A Conspiracy of Images: Andy Warhol, Gerhard Richter, and the Art of the Cold War," published by Yale University Press in fall 2013. His next book, "Global Art and the Cold War," appeared in early 2019 (Laurence King). He has also published essays on Willem de Kooning, Lothar Baumgarten, and on World War II photography in Life magazine and was a contributor to the catalogue of the international exhibition Warhol: Headlines (National Gallery of Art, Washington). His research has been supported by the Getty Research Institute, the Yale Center for British Art, the Henry Moore Foundation, and the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD), among others.edit
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Artists covered by entries: Otto Piene, Günther Uecker, Heinz Mack, Hermann Glöckner, Gerhard Richter, Konrad Klapheck, Sigmar Polke, Konrad Lueg, Wolf Vostell, Peter Brüning, Thomas Bayrle, Ulrich Baehr, Evelyn Richter, Bernd and Hilla... more
Artists covered by entries: Otto Piene, Günther Uecker, Heinz Mack, Hermann Glöckner, Gerhard Richter, Konrad Klapheck, Sigmar Polke, Konrad Lueg, Wolf Vostell, Peter Brüning, Thomas Bayrle, Ulrich Baehr, Evelyn Richter, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Candida Höfer, Imi Knoebel, Blinky Palermo, Hanne Darboven, Raffael Rheinsberg, Marcel Odenbach.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
The Life magazine " Picture of the Week " from May 22, 1944, still shocks nearly seventy years later. In this photograph by Ralph Crane (1913 –1988), viewers see a woman writing her boyfriend, an American soldier, a thank-you note for a... more
The Life magazine " Picture of the Week " from May 22, 1944, still shocks nearly seventy years later. In this photograph by Ralph Crane (1913 –1988), viewers see a woman writing her boyfriend, an American soldier, a thank-you note for a strange and horrific gift: a Japanese soldier's skull. Passed by American censors and redeployed as anti-American propaganda in Japan, this photograph exposes the perils of mixing a foreign war, photography, and the home front mass media. This essay has two primary components. First, it discusses the formal and iconographic qualities of the photograph, which, in tandem with its barbaric backstory, help produce its deeply unsettling effects. Second, incorporating thinkers like Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 –1900) and Maurice Blanchot (1907 –2003), it explores the way that the " Picture of the Week " attempts and subsequently fails to rationalize the depicted brutality. This failure not only serves to emphasize the barbarity on display but also leads to a broader concluding discussion about the nature of photography and its attempts to communicate the unthinkable to a distant home front audience.
Research Interests:
from Lothar Baumgarten: 7 Sounds, 7 Circles, 2009