Thomas McEvilley was an American art critic, poet, novelist, and scholar.
19 Facts About Thomas McEvilley
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Thomas McEvilley was a Distinguished Lecturer in Art History at Rice University and founder and former chair of the Department of Art Criticism and Writing at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.
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Thomas McEvilley then returned to Cincinnati, where he received a Ph.
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Thomas McEvilley retained a strong interest in modern art, reinforced by the artists of his acquaintance.
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In 1969, McEvilley joined the faculty of Rice University, where he spent the better part of his teaching career.
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Thomas McEvilley was a visiting professor at Yale University and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, among others.
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Thomas McEvilley taught numerous courses in Greek and Indian culture, history of religion and philosophy.
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Thomas McEvilley 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 for Distinction in Art Criticism from the College Art Association.
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Thomas McEvilley was a contributing editor of Artforum and editor in chief of Contemporanea.
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Thomas McEvilley died on March 2,2013, of complications from cancer at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
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Thomas McEvilley is survived by his wife, the artist Joyce Burstein; two sons from a former marriage, Thomas and Monte; a sister, Ellen M Griffin; and two grandchildren.
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Thomas McEvilley was married twice earlier; both marriages ended in divorce.
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Thomas McEvilley was an expert in the fields of Greek and Indian culture, history of religion and philosophy, and art.
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Thomas McEvilley 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.
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Thomas McEvilley did this in pointed fashion in "Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief," his influential jeremiad against the underlying assumptions that framed the Museum of Modern Art's 1984 exhibition Primitivism and Twentieth Century Art.
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Thomas McEvilley noted that after two decades of decline in importance as a medium, painting revived around 1980.
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Thomas McEvilley argued that formalist ideas are rooted in Neoplatonism and as such deal with the problem of content by claiming that content is embedded within form.
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Thomas McEvilley argues that today's Western world must be considered the product of both Greek and Indian thought, both Western philosophy and Eastern philosophies.
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Thomas McEvilley wrote monographs on Yves Klein, Pat Steir, Leon Golub, Jannis Kounellis, James Croak, Dennis Oppenheim, Anselm Kiefer, Dove Bradshaw, Bert Long.