Contact details:

The Courtauld Institute of Art

Somerset House

Strand

London WC2R 0RN

gavin.parkinson@courtauld.ac.uk

 

Gavin Parkinson was educated at the University of Manchester (BA 1996) under the tutelage of David Lomas and subsequently completed his MA (1997) and Ph.D. (2000) under the supervision of Christopher Green at The Courtauld Institute. He lectured at the University of Oxford (2004-07) before joining The Courtauld as Lecturer in European Modernism in 2008.

 

Current research/interests:

 

European art and visual culture of the twentieth century with a special interest in the connection between art and science in French art, 1900-1939. Latest writing is concerned with the interpretation of modernism by mainly French writers from the 1950s to the present day, turned towards a discussion of linguistics and the development of the writing of art history.

 

Programmes taught during the forthcoming academic year

 

  • MA: Modernism After Postmodernism: Modern Art and its Interpretation (to be confirmed)
  • Special Option: Surrealism: History, Themes, and Concepts
  • Period Course: Art in France, 1900-1939: Nationhood and Tradition

 

Recent publications:

 

Books

Surrealism, Art and Modern Science: Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Epistemology (Yale University Press, 2008)

The Duchamp Book (Tate Publishing, 2008)


Essays and Articles

‘Emotional Fusion with the Animal Kingdom: Notes Towards a Natural History of Surrealism,’
Fae Brauer and Barbara Larson (eds.), Darwin and Visual Culture, Press of the University
of New England, forthcoming 2009.

‘The Duchamp Code,’ David Getsy (ed.), From Diversion to Subversion: Games, Play, and Twentieth
Century Art, Penn State, forthcoming 2008.

‘How Dalí Learned to Stop Worrying about Surrealism and Love the Bomb,’ Michael Taylor
(ed.), The Dalí Renaissance: New Perspectives on His Life and Art after 1940, Philadelphia:
Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2008, 71-89.

‘Photoanthropography,’ Ken Heyman: Humanity, New York: Sundaram Tagore Gallery, 2008.

‘The Laughter and Tears of Eros,’ Marc Decimo (ed.), Marcel Duchamp and Eroticism, Newcastle
upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2007, 149-59.

‘“Very Stupid Stuff”: Making Sense of Adolf Wölfli,’ Richard Pine (ed.), Creativity, Madness and
Civilisation, Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2007, 235-63.


‘From Max Ernst to Ernst Mach, or Surrealism, Modern Physics and Epistemology’/‘De Max

Ernst a Ernst Mach, o surrealisme, física moderna i epistemologia,’ Dalí. Noves fronteres de

la ciència, l’art i el pensament, Barcelona: Generalitat de Catalunya, Departament de

Cultura, 2005, 101-119, 149-63.


‘“This Harrowing and Colossal question of Einsteinian Space-time,”’ Persistence and Memory: New
Critical Perspectives on Dalí at the Centennial, St. Petersburg, Florida: The Salvador Dalí
Museum, 2004, 27-31.

‘Surrealism and Quantum Mechanics: Dispersal and Fragmentation in Art, Life, and Physics,’
Science in Context, (sp. issue, ‘Modern Art and Science’), vol. 17, no. 4, December 2004,
557-77.