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 Recent Faculty Publications

Late 19th and Early 20th Century Art
20th Century Art
Theory & Criticism
History of Photography
Modern Art

Modernism and politics in early 20th-century Europe; primitivism; history and theory of photography

Area of Interest: European and North American modernism, art and politics, anarchist theory, primitivism, postcolonialism, history of photography

Patricia Leighten received her PhD from Rutgers University. She is author of The Liberation of Painting: Modernism and Anarchism in Avant-Guerre Paris (University of Chicago Press 2013) and Re-Ordering the Universe: Picasso and Anarchism, 1897-1914 (Princeton University Press 1989) as well as coauthor of A Cubism Reader: Documents and Criticism, 1906-1914 (University of Chicago Press 2008) [Le cubisme devant ses contemporains–Documents et critiques (1906-1914), Paris: Les Presses du réel, forthcoming 2013] and Cubism and Culture (Thames & Hudson 2001 [Cubisme et culture 2002]). Her field of research is late nineteenth-/early twentieth-century art and politics. In her research and teaching, she is interested in the relationship between visual culture and the politics of both representation and interpretation.

Education:

• PhD in Art History Rutgers University 1983
• MA Rutgers University 1975
• BA summa cum laude University of Massachusetts/Boston 1973

Typical Courses Taught:

• Arthist 369, Modernism/cultural pol

• Arthist 167, Modernism, avant-gardism, art Synopsis

• Arthist 198, Cubism and culture Synopsis

• Arthist 121, Visualizing cultural dissent Synopsis

• Arthist 199, Hist photo 1839-present Synopsis

• Arthist 283s, Topics modern art Synopsis

• Arthist 187, Dada and surrealism Synopsis

• Arthist 364, Primitivism/art/culture

1.  The Liberation of Painting: Modernism and Anarchism in Avant-Guerre Paris. University of Chicago Press, (2013). (A study of art and anarchist politics in early 20th-century Paris, considering the variety of ways politicized art fostered the development of modernist idioms (in press; forthcoming June 2013)) [html]  [abs]
2. "“Modernist Abstraction, Anarchist Antimilitarism, and War”." Anarchist Developments in Cultural Studies  (January, 2012).
3. "Artists in Times of War: Response to Ariel Dorfman’s 'Picasso’s Closet'." Art Bulletin  (March, 2009).
4. "Café Scene; Salomé; Head of a Woman; Vase, Gourd and Fruit; Scallop Shells on a Piano; Still Life with Calling Card; and Ace of Clubs." Picasso and the Allure of Language. Edited by Susan Greenberg Fisher.  (2009). (Essays for exhibition catalogue for exhibition 'Picasso and the Allure of Language', Yale University Art Gallery, spring 2009, and Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, fall 2009)  [abs]
5. Mark Antliff. A Cubism Reader: Documents and Criticism, 1906-1914. University of Chicago Press, (2008). (An anthology of newly translated, unabridged primary documents, several newly discovered, with interpretive essays preceding each document and with an introduction outlining the present state of the literature in Cubism studies. French edition, Paris: Les presses du réel, forthcoming 2012.)  [abs]
6. Mark Antliff. Cubism and Culture. London and New York: Thames & Hudson, (2001). (Cubisme et culture, Paris: Thames & Hudson, 2002)
7. Mark Antliff. "Primitive." Critical Terms for Art History. Edited by Robert Nelson and Richard Shiff, University of Chicago Press. revised edition (2003).
8. "Colonialism, l'art nègre, and les Demoiselles d'Avignon." Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. Edited by Christopher Green, Cambridge University Press.  (2001).
9. "Reveil Anarchiste: Salon Painting, Political Satire, Modernist Art." Modernism/modernity  vol. II (April, 1995): 17-47. [html]
10. "Cubist Anachronisms: Ahistoricity, Cryptoformalism, And Business-As-Usual in New York." Oxford Art Journal  vol. XVII (Fall, 1994): 91-102. [1360577]
11.  Re-Ordering the Universe: Picasso and Anarchism, 1897-1914. Princeton University Press, (1989).

Selected Exhibitions

1. Light Sensitive: Photographic Works from North Carolina Collections, 2012 - present, Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University [php]    

Selected Invited Lectures

1. "Picasso and His Times", April 30 and May 1, 2012, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto    
2. “From Mutual Aid to Radical Individualism: Neoimpressionism and Fauvism in Light of Anarchist Aesthetic Theory", September 10, 2011, Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA    
3. Keynote: "Modernism, Antimilitarism and War" (and podcast), November 11, 2010, Modernist Studies Association, Victoria, BC    
4. "A 'Rationale of Ugliness': Primitivism, Cubism and Its Audience, 1908-13", 2010, Norma U. Lifton Memorial Lecture in Art History, School of the Art Institute of Chicago (October 2010)    
5. "May Ray, Cubism and Primitivism", April 6, 2010, University of New Mexico Art Museum    
6. "Abstracting Anarchism: Élisée Reclus, František Kupka and the Project of Modernism", September 2008, Symposium: Modernism and Antimodernism: Theories, Visions, Ideologies, Politics, National Museum of Romanian Literature and the Amfiteatru Foundation, Bucharest, Romania; and Conference: Humanity and the Earth/L’Homme et la terre: The Legacy of Élisée Reclus (1830-1905), Loyola University, New Orleans, October 2006    
7. "Violence vs. Creativity in Kupka's Anarchist Art and Aesthetics", September 2007, Annual Conference of the Nordic Network for Avant-Garde Studies on 'Avant-Garde and Violence', University of Iceland, Reykjavik    
8. "The Utopian and Dystopian Visions of František Kupka", May 2006, Scuola di Studi Avanzati di Venezia, Venice International University; Conference: New Approaches to Primitivism and Modern Culture, Rice University, February 2001; University of Virginia, February 2001; University of Edinburgh, November 2000; University of Missouri, Kansas City, October 2001; The Courtauld Institute, University of London, November 1999; Conference: The New Modernisms, Modernism Studies Association annual conference, October 1999; and Conference: France 1900: Visual, Literary, and Political Cultures, University of Bristol, November 1999    
9. "Primitivism, Modernism and the Renovation of Culture", February 2004, Center for the Humanities, Loyola College, Baltimore    
10. "The Languages of Collage: Politics and Counter-Politics in Picasso and Gris", November 2002, Visual Culture Colloquium, Cornell University; and University of St. Andrew’s, Scotland, October 2002    

Selected Talks

1. "Expatriates and Exiles", November 2008, UAAC Annual Conference, Toronto