Critic and curator Yve-Alain Bois, Ph.D., a widely recognized expert on 20th-century European and American art, will present a lecture titled “Chance Encounters: John Cage, Francois Morellet, Ellsworth Kelly” at 6:30 p.m. Monday, Nov. 9, in Steinberg Hall Auditorium.
The talk — held in conjunction with the exhibition “Chance Aesthetics,” on view at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum through Jan. 4, 2010 — is part of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts’ fall Public Lecture Series and is co-sponsored by the Department of Art History & Archaeology in Arts & Sciences.
A reception for Bois will precede the lecture at 6 p.m.
A faculty member at the School for Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, N.J., Bois is the author of several widely translated books as well as more than 100 essays for exhibition catalogues, scholarly journals and other publications.
He also is the curator of several influential exhibitions, including “Piet Mondrian, A Retrospective” for the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Museum of Modern Art in New York and Gemeentemuseum in The Hague; “L’informe, Mode d’Emploi (Formless: A User’s Guide)” for Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris; and “Matisse and Picasso: A Gentle Rivalry” for the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas.
The latter two exhibitions were each conceived in tandem with books. “L’informe, Mode d’Emploi” (with Rosalind Krauss) introduced concepts that transformed the understanding of avant-garde and modernist art practices. “Matisse and Picasso” traced the relationships not only between the two artists but also between their works, their words and their views of art.
Other books include “Francis Picabia;” “Arthur Lehning en Mondrian — Hun Vriendschap en Correspondentie (Lehning and Mondrian — Their Friendship and Correspondence”; “Painting as Model”; and “Martin Barre.” With Benjamin Buchloh, Krauss and Hal Foster, he wrote “Art Since 1900,” a major textbook on 20th-century art.
Current projects include a study of Barnett Newman’s paintings, the catalogue “raisonne” of Ellsworth Kelly’s paintings and sculptures and the modern history of axonometric projection.
Bois holds a doctoral degree from the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris. A co-editor of the journal October, he also co-founded the journal Macula and remains an adviser to that publication’s book series.
Bois began his career at the French National Centre for Scientific Research in Paris in 1977. He was on faculty at Johns Hopkins University from 1983-1991, at which time he accepted the Joseph Pulitzer Jr. Professorship of Modern Art in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University.
For more information, call 935-9300 or visit samfoxschool.wustl.edu.