Thomas McEvilley (born 1939, Cincinnati, Ohio) is an American art critic, poet, novelist and scholar, who was a distinguisted lecturer in art history at Rice University and founder and former head of the Department of Art Criticism and Writing at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.
Thomas McEvilley studied Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, and classical philosophy in the classics programs of the University of Cincinnati where he received a B.A., and the University of Washington, where he received an M.A.. He then returned to Cincinnati, where he received a Ph.D. in classical philology. He also retained a strong interest in modern art, reinforced by the modern artists of his acquaintance.
In 1969, McEvilley joined the faculty of Rice University, where he spent the better part of his teaching career. He has been a visiting professor at Yale University and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, among others. He taught numerous courses in Greek and Indian culture, history of religion and philosophy. In 2008 he retired from teaching after 41 years, and now lives in New York City and in upstate New York in the Catskills.
He has received numerous awards, including the Semple Prize at the University of Cincinnati, a National Endowment for the Arts Critics grant, a Fulbright fellowship in 1993, an NEA critic’s grant, and the Frank Jewett Mather Award (1993) for Distinction in Art Criticism from the College Art Association.
McEvilley has been a contributing editor of Artforum and editor in chief of Contemporanea.
McEvilley is an expert in the fields of Greek and Indian culture, history of religion and philosophy, and art. He has published several books and hundreds of scholarly monographs, articles, catalog essays, and reviews on early Greek and Indian poetry, philosophy, and religion as well as on contemporary art and culture.
McPherson & Company Publishers
Toward a Redefinition of Painting for the Post-Modern Era
In his 1993 book The Exile’s Return: Toward a Redefinition of Painting for the Post-Modern Era, McEvilley made an important contribution to the late twentieth century "death of painting" debate. He stated that after two decades, painting revived around 1980. In its return from exile, painting has assumed a new theoretical basis in postmodern cultural theory, together with a new kind of self-awareness and interest in its own limitations. A number of contemporary artists such as Gerhard Richter and Glenn Brown demonstrate this new found self-reflexity and critical nature.
Heads it's Form, Tails it's not Content
In the article "Heads its Form, Tails it's not Content" McEvilley describes a theoretical framework for the formal project presented by post-war critics such as Clement Greenberg, Michael Fried, and Sheldon Nodelman.
He argues that formalist ideas are rooted in Neoplatonism and as such deal with the problem of content by claiming that content is embedded within the form. However, the formalists desire a transcendentally free critique of art in the same way that Colin Rowe and Peter Eisenman explore the interiority of architecture.
Formalism is based on a linguistic model which Claude Lévi-Strauss argues is given content through the unconscious. In presenting formalism, one cannot ignore the content which accompanies the form.
Sculpture in the Age of Doubt
In the book Sculpture in the Age of Doubt (1999) McEvilley described the intellectual issues surrounding the postmodern movement in the course of 20th-century sculpture.
The Shape of Ancient Thought
In The Shape of Ancient Thought McEvilley explores the foundations of Western civilization. He argues that today’s Western world must be considered the product of both Greek and Indian thought, and Western philosophy and Eastern philosophies. He explores how trade, imperialism, and currents of migration allowed cultural philosophies to intermingle freely throughout India, Egypt, Greece, and the ancient Near East.
This book spans thirty years of McEvilley's research, from 1970 to 2000.
1993, Fusion: West African Artists at the Venice Biennale
1993, The Exile’s Return: Toward a Redefinition of Painting for the Post-Modern Era
1994, Der Erste Akt
1999, Sculpture in the Age of Doubt
2002, The Shape of Ancient Thought: Comparative Studies in Greek and Indian Philosophies
2007, The Triumph of Anti-Art
2008, Sappho
2010, Art, Love, Friendship: Marina Abramovic and Ulay, Together & Apart
2010, Yves the Provocateur: Yves Klein and Twentieth-Century Art
Essays
Heads It’s Form, Tails It’s Not Content (TKTK)
On the Manner of Addressing Clouds (TKTK)
The Monochrome Icon
“I Am” Is a Vain Thought
Art History or Sacred History?
Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief: ‘Primitivism’ in Twentieth-Century Art at the Museum of Modern Art
The Selfhood of the Other
Another Alphabet: The Work of Marcel Broodthaers
History, Quality, Globalism
Penelope’s Night Work: Negative Thinking in Greek Philosophy
Arrivederci, Venice: The Third World Biennials
The Tomb of the Zombie
Paul McCarthy: Performance and Video Works: the Layering (2008)
Here Comes Everybody (1994)
James Lee Byars and the Atmosphere of Question
Monographs
Thomas McEvilley wrote monographs on Yves Klein (1982), Pat Steir, Leon Golub (1993), Jannis Kounellis (1986), James Croak (1999), Dennis Oppenheim, Anselm Kiefer, Dove Bradshaw (2004).
