Jonathan Fineberg

I began studying early modern art in graduate school because at the time the “best” university programs in art history didn’t have faculty who specialized in teaching contemporary art. At the Courtauld Institute in London the study of art ended in 1915 and at Harvard it was frowned upon to work on anything after World War Two. So I wrote a dissertation on the early work of Kandinsky while continuing to write criticism in newspapers. But my first teaching job was at the University of Illinois where they hired me to create courses on contemporary art history and criticism. Art Since 1940: Strategies of Being began from class notes in which I attempted to chart the field for myself and my students. My interest in living artists was nurtured by friendships early in my professional life with the painter Robert Motherwell, the artist Christo, and the critic Harold Rosenberg.