Jonathan Crary
American art critic
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jonathan Crary is an American art critic and essayist.[1] He is the Meyer Schapiro Professor of Modern Art and Theory at Columbia University.[2] His first notable works were Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the 19th Century (1990), and Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle, and Modern Culture (2000).[2] He has published critical essays for more than 30 exhibition catalogues.[2] A dominant analytical theme in his work is the history of vision, observation and perception.[3][4]
San Francisco Art Institute (BFA)
Jonathan Crary | |
|---|---|
| Born | Jonathan Crary |
| Occupation | Writer, art critic |
| Education | Columbia University (BA, PhD) San Francisco Art Institute (BFA) |
| Notable awards | Guggenheim Fellowship (1991) |
Education
Crary attended high school at the Putney School in Vermont.[citation needed] He graduated from Columbia College, where he was an art history major.[2] In 1987, he received his Ph.D. from Columbia University.[2] Crary also earned a B.F.A. from the San Francisco Art Institute, where he studied film and photography.[2]
Teaching
He first taught in the Visual Arts Department at the University of California, San Diego.[2] In 1989, he began teaching at Columbia University full-time.[2] He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1991.[5]
Writing
Crary's 24/7: Late Capitalism and the End of Sleep explores the nonstop pace of the modern world and its effects on human psychology and physiology, with an emphasis on sleep patterns.[6]
His Suspensions of Perception focuses on the period from about 1880 to 1905, in which Crary describes the emergence of subjective vision.[7] In addition, Crary discusses how attention became a “new object within the modernization of subjectivity.”[8] The book examines how the perceptions of various cultures were reconstructed. This new development of vision created controversy because it implied that seeing was dependent upon one's subjective thoughts. Therefore, this new way of seeing was thought of as unclear, unreliable, and always questioned among a large population of people.[citation needed] Suspensions of Perception was published in 2000 and was the winner of the 2001 Lionel Trilling Book Award.[2]
Crary's Techniques of the Observer is a study on the origins of modern visual culture.[9] Techniques of the Observer was published in 1990 and translated into twelve foreign languages.[10]
Crary has written on art and culture for publications including Art in America, Artforum, October, Assemblage, Cahiers du Cinéma, Film Comment, Grey Room, Domus, and The Village Voice.[11] Crary has also written critical essays for more than thirty exhibition catalogs.[2] Crary contributed to the 7th edition of the anthology Film Theory and Criticism anthology.[2]
In 1986, Crary was one of the founders of Zone Books, a press known for publications in history, art theory, politics, anthropology, and philosophy.[12] Crary was co-editor of the 1992 volume Incorporations (Zone Books).[13] Crary continues to be a co-editor of Zone Books.[14]
Bibliography
- Crary, Jonathan (2022). Scorched earth: beyond the digital age to a post-capitalist world. Verso. ISBN 978-1-78478-444-7.
- Crary, Jonathan (2013). 24/7: late capitalism and the ends of sleep. Verso. ISBN 978-1-78168-093-3.
- Crary, Jonathan (1999). Suspensions of perception: attention, spectacle, and modern culture. October Books. MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-585-27082-1.
- Crary, Jonathan; Kwinter, Sanford, eds. (1992). Incorporations. New York: Zone. ISBN 978-0-942299-29-8.
- Crary, Jonathan (1990). Techniques of the observer: on vision and modernity in the nineteenth century. MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-03169-1.
- Sternfeld, Joel; Crary, Jonathan (2010). iDubai. Göttingen: Steidl. ISBN 978-3-86521-916-9.