Clark, T.J. (Timothy James Clark)

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Clark, T.J. (Timothy James Clark)

PERSONAL:

Education: St. John's College, Cambridge, B.A. (first class with distinction), 1964; Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, Ph.D., 1973.

ADDRESSES:

Office—History of Art Department, University of California, 416 Doe Library 6020, Berkeley, CA 94720.

CAREER:

Art historian, educator, and writer. Essex University, Essex, England, lecturer, 1967-69; Camberwell School of Art, London, England, senior lecturer, 1970-74; University of California, Los Angeles, CA, associate professor, 1975-76; Leeds University, Leeds, England, chair of fine art, 1976-80; Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, professor, 1980-88; University of California, Berkeley, CA, professor, also George C. and Helen N. Pardee Chair of Modern Art, beginning 1987. University of California, Los Angeles, visiting professor, 1974-75; Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, CA, fellow, 2000.

WRITINGS:

The Absolute Bourgeois: Artists and Politics in France, 1848-1851, New York Graphic Society (Greenwich, CT), 1973.

Image of the People: Gustave Courbet and the Second French Republic, 1848-1851, New York Graphic Society (New York, NY), 1973.

The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and His Followers, Thames & Hudson (London, England), 1985.

Farewell to an Idea: Episodes from a History of Modernism, Yale University Press, (New Haven, CT), 1999.

The Sight of Death: An Experiment in Art Writing, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 2006.

Contributor to Self Portrait: Renaissance to Contemporary, by Anthony Bond and Joanna Woodall, Art Gallery of New South Wales (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia), 2006. Contributor to periodicals, including London Review of Books.

SIDELIGHTS:

British art historian T.J. Clark produced two companion works in 1973, both concerned with the influence of politics on French artists of the mid- nineteenth century. The Absolute Bourgeois: Artists and Politics in France, 1848-1851 disputes the commonly held idea that many artists of the period were intensely political, even radical, in their views at the time of the 1848 revolution. Examining the work of Daumier, Millet, Delacroix, and Baudelaire, Clark concludes that politics was not central to each man's artistic persona. A reviewer writing in Choice called the book "intelligently partisan … highly original and demanding." According to Christopher Thompson in the New York Times Book Review, Clark, a Marxist, is "a critic committed to the left" and "a delightful writer who evidently loves painting." Thompson added that Clark's purpose in both The Absolute Bourgeois and Image of the People: Gustave Courbet and the Second French Republic, 1848-1851 is to change the perception of nineteenth-century French painting from that of "the history of a heroic Avant-Garde." To Clark, according to Thompson, the social significance of paintings is the result of "processes … constantly changing."

In Image of the People, Clark analyzes the work of Courbet from both a political and a social viewpoint. A Choice contributor wrote that this work is "‘a must’ for people interested in l9th-century art and history." Clark attempts to analyze, for example, why Courbet's painting "Burial at Ornans" caused so much more offense among the bourgeoisie than another work, "The Stonebreakers." Clark concludes that Parisians sensitive about their own recent history as provincials saw a more severe tone of "gravity and [the] grotesque" in the former than in the latter. While Thompson thought that Clark "underestimate[s] the very real functions" of "the progressive intelligentsia" in Paris, he praised Clark's "determination to cut the myth of the l9th-century Avant-Garde down to size."

Clark provides still another look at nineteenth-century French artists in 1985's The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and His Followers. Again using a Marxist orientation—what the author terms "historical materialism"—Clark relates the works of a number of painters to changes in the society of their time. According to Francis Haskell in the New Republic, Clark's writing is "not always easy" but is highly original and can be "very telling and vivid." Clark uses a great deal of original research, weaving the works of painters into the fabric of a petit bourgeois society obsessed with a new culture of leisure. Clark attempts to deconstruct the images in such paintings as Manet's "L'Exposition Universelle de 1867" and "Olympia" to show, in the words of Haskell, "the difficulties of finding one's orientation in a society which had lost its traditional bearings."

In a review for Nation, Paul Mattick, Jr., reminded readers that Impressionism, now the stuff of "reproductions people hang on their walls," was in its early years considered avant-garde. One of the questions Clark addresses is how such art could have been considered ugly by the establishment of the time. As a leftist, he is concerned with the transformation of the avant-garde into socially acceptable forms. According to Mattick, it is important to remember "capitalism's ability to absorb oppositional energies but also the tendency of its continual self-transformation to provoke their appearance."

Clark always connects the images in the paintings he analyzes with the historical meanings he perceives. He sees what Mattick called "distinctions and disparities" in such paintings as "Argenteuil, the Boaters" and "A Bar at the Folies-Bergere." In the latter, Mattick asserted, Clark analyzes Manet's work "against the socio-semiotics of the cafe concert."

Some of Clark's reviewers have criticized his complex style; others felt his theories stretched a bit thin. Nicholas Penny in the London Review of Books, for example, called Clark's treatment of the paintings "selective." Many of the works Clark chooses not to cover—such as Manet's still lifes—do not fit neatly into his idea that the "troubling aspect[s]" of modern life are addressed in impressionist art, according to Penny. Critics, however, generally praised The Painting of Modern Life for its contributions to art history. Haskell asserted that "Clark really does deserve the attention he receives even from those who find his attitude and interpretations wholly unsympathetic."

In 1999 Clark produced yet another book that examines the development of modernism in art. In the seven essays in Farewell to an Idea: Episodes from a History of Modernism Clark again relates an artistic movement to the material conditions that spawned it. He begins with the revolutionary message of "The Death of Marat" by David in 1793; he outlines modernist tendencies in the French impressionists and post-impressionists and deals extensively with Picasso and Jackson Pollock, among many others. According to a review by Julian Bell in the Times Literary Supplement, one of Clark's important points is that "modernist art will be seen to lie back to back with the leftist political tradition that finally evaporated when the Berlin Wall fell."

As with Clark's other works, critics warned readers of the densely intellectual style of Farewell to an Idea. Bell wrote that "sometimes [Clark's] words run away with him," and Paula Frosch in Library Journal asserted that the book is "difficult" and "thought-provoking, [requiring] almost as much effort on the part of the reader as that of the author." Yet a Publishers Weekly reviewer found the book "historically nuanced, … aglow with … deep learning and masterful prose." Bell called the book "definitive" and praised its "thrilling explorations of historical junctures" and "highly wrought artistry."

In his 2006 book, The Sight of Death: An Experiment in Art Writing, Clark uses the examination of two paintings by Nicolas Poussin to discuss how views of paintings change with the passage of decades and repeated viewings. The author also explores how art writers, for the most part, do not investigate the idea of reviewing paintings again and again but hold to the theory that paintings reveal themselves completely on a single viewing. The book came about when Clark was a visiting fellow at the Getty Research Institute and visited its museum. While there, he became interested in two paintings in particular and kept returning to the museum for repeated viewings. The two paintings by Poussin are "Landscape with a Man Killed by a Snake" and "Landscape with a Calm." Although both paintings are lakeside scenes, the first is disturbing in that it depicts a woman on a path and man running toward her pointing to a nearby corpse with a snake wrapped around it. The second is a more traditional study of nature.

Writing in New Criterion, Michael J. Lewis noted: "Few works are as eminently deserving of a book-length study as ‘Landscape with a Man Killed by a Snake’." Writing in the same article, Lewis went on to comment: "As he tells us here, Clark noticed how repeated viewings of the painting under shifting conditions of weather and light brought out certain features and aspects, often unexpectedly. Soon he conceived the idea of a book that would track his unfolding reflections on the painting." Lewis added: "The book is in the form of a diary, a series of daily entries that are reproduced, he tells us, with only minimal editing in order to retain their spontaneity. It is profusely illustrated, mostly with selected details of the paintings, shown in progressively greater enlargements."

In an interview with Clark on the Brooklyn Rail Web site, Kathryn Tuma commented on his book, noting: "The Sight of Death is many things: a study of two paintings; a reflection on the place of writing in art history; a meditation on death; a heated response to contemporary ‘image-culture’; a critique of current trends in academic art history; and an impassioned argument for the value of time spent looking at works of art, making more than good on its claim that ‘astonishing things can happen if one gives oneself over to the process of seeing again and again.’"

Overall, Clark's studies of Poussin's paintings received good reviews. Nina C. Ayoub, writing a review of The Sight of Death in the Chronicle of Higher Education, noted: "What holds the reader is a vivid immersion in the author's process of discovery. His blend of thinking and noticing grips us as details are revealed in the room's ever-shifting light—hazy or glittering through the louvered ceiling or a bright artificial glare." A Reference & Research Book News contributor commented that the author "opens up new ways of seeing and thinking about art."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Art Bulletin, June, 2001, Karsten Harries, review of Farewell to an Idea: Episodes from a History of Modernism, p. 358.

Artforum International, May, 1999, David Joselit, "Contingency Plan," review of Farewell to an Idea, p. 31.

Art in America, October, 1999, Stephen F. Eisenman, review of Farewell to an Idea, p. 59.

Art Journal, winter, 1999, James D. Herbert, "Clark's Modernism," review of Farewell to an Idea.

Choice, December, 1973, review of The Absolute Bourgeois: Artists and Politics in France, 1848-1851, p. 1539; January, 1974, review of Image of the People: Gustave Courbet and the Second French Republic, 1848-1851, p. 1707.

Chronicle of Higher Education, September 1, 2006, Nina C. Ayoub, review of The Sight of Death: An Experiment in Art Writing.

First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life, October, 1999, Robert W. Jenson, review of Farewell to an Idea, p. 59.

Library Journal, April 1, 1999, Paula Frosch, review of Farewell to an Idea, p. 90; June 15, 1999, Michael Rogers, review of Image of the People, p. 113; June 15, 1999, Michael Rogers, review of The Absolute Bourgeois, p. 113.

London Review of Books, March 20, 1986, Nicholas Penny, review of The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and His Followers, pp. 13-14.

Modern Age, fall, 2004, James F. Cooper, "Modernism in the Visual Arts," review of Farewell to an Idea.

Nation, April 10, 1989, Paul Mattick, Jr., review of The Painting of Modern Life, pp. 495-498.

New Criterion, December, 2006, Michael J. Lewis, "T.J. Clark in Winter," review of The Sight of Death, p. 4.

New Republic, February 18, 1985, Francis Haskell, review of The Painting of Modern Life, pp. 32-34.

New York Times Book Review, September 2, 1973, Christopher Thompson, review of The Absolute Bourgeois, p. 7.

Publishers Weekly, March 29, 1999, review of Farewell to an Idea, p. 80.

Reference & Research Book News, November, 2006, review of The Sight of Death.

Spectator, June 5, 1999, Martin Gayford, "Hopeless, Wild and Impractical," p. 44; August 12, 2006, Anita Brookner, "The Eyes Have It," review of The Sight of Death.

Times Literary Supplement, April 9, 1999, Julian Bell, review of Farewell to an Idea, pp. 16-17.