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Staff Profile

Dr Stephen Moonie

Lecturer in Art History

  • Email: stephen.moonie@ncl.ac.uk
  • Telephone: 0191 20 88986
  • Address: Dept of Fine Art
    School of Arts and Cultures
    The Quadrangle
    Newcastle upon Tyne
    NE1 7RU
Background
Stephen Moonie is an art historian. He specialises in the art and theory of the post-war United States, with a particular interest in the critical discourse of modernism in the 1950s and 1960s. More broadly, he is interested in art writing and contemporary painting.

Previously, Stephen taught at the Department of History of Art at the University of Warwick. He completed his MA (Hons) at the University of St Andrews, and completed his MA (2005) and Ph.D. (2009) at the University of Essex.

Stephen is module leader for 'Art Since 45: Postwar to Pluralism' (FIN2017/3027), and this year (2022-3) he will be module leader for 'Art Writing' (FIN4023). He also supervises undergraduate dissertations at Stage 3 level. Stephen is Chair of the Board of Examiners for the BA, MFA and CAP programmes in Fine Art.


Research

 

Stephen’s research interests focus upon postwar art and theory, especially Modernist painting and its criticism.

Stephen recently edited the special journal issue 'Reconsidering the State(s) of Criticism' for the online journal Arts, where he has also published an article on Charles Harrison's ambivalent relationship to modernism (2022). His monograph Art Criticism and Modernism in the United States (2022) is a study of the major modernist critics and their important contributions to fundamental questions on art writing and method.

Stephen has written articles on the writings of British art critic Lawrence Alloway, the late critic/historian Leo Steinberg and Harold Rosenberg's rivalry with Artforum. He was part of the archival project ‘Critics and Curators’ at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles in 2011, and was part of the Tate research project, 'Artwriting in Britain.'

Stephen is also interested in modern and contemporary painting. He contributed to the catalogue for the exhibition at Tate St Ives and Warwick Arts Centre, The Indiscipline of Painting (2011). He chaired a session at the Art Historians’ Annual Conference in March 2012 which explored strategies of naivety in contemporary painting. His 2015 article on Luc Tuymans examined the legacy of Postmodernism in the reception of the artist's work.


Recent talks and papers:


'Art-Language's critique of Ways of Seeing,' Nottingham University Centre for Research in Visual Culture seminar, February 2023.

'American Art in the 1960s,' HENI Art Club, Oct 2022.

'A Rigorous Dialectic of Seeing and Reading: Annette Michelson's art criticism,' Association for Art History Annual Conference, April 2022.

'Annette Michelson's early art criticism,' Visual and Material Culture seminar, Northumbria University, Dec. 2020.

'Roy Lichtenstein: Brushstrokes,' Hatton Gallery, December 2019.

'Backing into modernist sculpture,' Reassessing Sculpture in and Beyond Abstract Expressionism, Kettle's Yard, Cambridge, November 2018.

'Painting and Exile,' DAVAR Bristol, April 2018.

'Painting and Exile,' Laing Art Gallery, February 2017.

'Dan Flavin: Illumination,' Cafe des Artistes, Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, January 2016.

'David Lynch Naming' [review] BBC Arts online, (Dec. 2014).

'Reflections on "Artwriting Under the Sign of Conceptualism,"' Tate research website, June 2013.

http://www.tate.org.uk/about/projects/art-writers-britain/art-writing-conceptualism/reflections

'Charles Harrison: Criticism, Complexity, Disinterest,' 'Charles Harrison: Writing on Art, 1966-2009,' workshop, Tate Britain, October 2013.

'October and the ends of Painting,' Conference: 'Hidden Forces: Painting in the 1960s and 1970s,' conference, Museum fur Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main, June 2013.

'Ed Ruscha,' Artists Rooms, Hatton Gallery, April 2013.

'Where is Art Criticism?' Tate Britain Round-table, June 2013.

'Correspondences: Lawrence Alloway and Ray Johnson,' Critics and Curators Workshop, Getty Research Institute, November 2012.

‘Rembrandt’s Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp,’ BAPRAS Summer Scientific Meeting, The Sage Gateshead, July 2012.

38th Association of Art Historians Annual Conference, The Open University, Milton Keynes. Session convener: '"Bad" Painting', March 2012.

‘Leo Steinberg on Jasper Johns,’ University of Warwick research seminar, March 2011.

35th Association of Art Historians Annual Conference, Manchester Metropolitan University: Intersections. Session co-convener (with Matthew Bowman): ‘Art History and Art Criticism: Intersections, Disconnections, Non-Communications,’ April 2009.

Teaching

 

Stephen is module leader for the ‘Art Since 1945: Postwar to Pluralism,’ which is available to students in Stage 2 and 3 during the Autumn semester. For the academic year 2022-23, he will be module leader for the Stage 4 module 'Art Writing.' He supervises BA dissertation students and is Chair of the Board of Examiners for the BA, MFA and CAP programmes.

I have experience supervising Ph.D. students in Fine Art and I welcome applicants in the fields of modern and contemporary art history. 



Publications