New Publication Edited by Faculty Member

February 14, 2011

Dialectical Conversions: Donald Kuspit's Art Criticism (Liverpool University Press, 2011 ), recently published, is co-edited by Dr. David Craven, Distinguished Professor of Art History at the University of New Mexico, and Brian Winkenweder, Associate Professor of Art History at Linfield College. Dr. Craven is affiliated with the Latin American and Iberian Institute.

This publication is the first study of one of the most celebrated critics in US history, Donald Kuspit, whose intertwined careers as a philosopher, art historian, and psychoanalyst have yielded a type of criticism with unrivalled range in Western history. The book's contents include essays by two dozen different artists, critics, and art historians from at least ten different countries around the world. The artists whose contributions are published in the book include Anselm Kiefer, April Gornik, Rudolf Baranik, and George Baselitz, while the critics and art historians whose essays appear include various prominent figures from Asia, Europe, the US, Latin America, and the Middle East.

Dr. Craven has served on the faculty at UNM since 1993. He is an expert in three areas: 20th century Art from Latin America, Post-1945 Art from the USA, and Critical Theory, as well as Philosophy of Methods in Art History & Visual Cultures. Craven has authored ten books and major museum catalogues, including Art and Revolution in Latin America, 1910-1990 (Yale University Press, 2002 & 2006). In addition, he has been Guest Editor of the Oxford Art Journal (1994) and Modernism/Modernity (January 2008). More than 100 articles and review essays by him have appeared in the leading journals of over two dozen different countries. In 1991, Craven won a Medal of Excellence from the State of New York. Among the authors to praise Craven's work on Central America was Ernesto Cardenal, Minister of Culture in Nicaragua during the Sandinista Revolution of the 1980s. On this, see Cardenal's important book La Revolución Perdida (Madrid: Editorial Trotta, 2004): 353, 364, 370.

This information was provided by the UNM Department of Art & Art History and Liverpool University Press.