Jonathan Katz
PhD
Interests
Queer theory; queer history; the theory and history of social/political dissidence; American art; modern and contemporary art and art theory; the body in art; Latin American art
Contact Information
Because images can represent ideas that can’t be spoken, a queer art history offers a lens on art, social terms of discourse, political limits and utopian ideals.
Education
- PhD, Northwestern University, Department of Art History 1995
- MA, University of Chicago, Art History and General Studies in the Humanities, 1983
- BA, The George Washington University, 1981
Books
- Art AIDS America (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2015). Editor, with Rock Hushka, and author of the 50 page lead article.
- Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture (New York: Smithsonian Books, 2010). With David Ward (winner of the American Library Association’s Stonewall Award/ Israel Fishman Prize for best queer non-fiction book of 2011).
- Difference/Indifference: Musings on Postmodernism, Marcel Duchamp and John Cage, co-authored with Moira Roth (New York: Gordon and Breach, 1998).
- Andy Warhol (New York: Rizzoli Press, 1993).
- The Routledge Companion to Queer Art History, An anthology of 40 new essays, (forthcoming in 2021).
- Johns, Rauschenberg, and the Sexuality of American Art, (forthcoming).
- Art, Eros and the Sixties (in progress).
Selected Publications
- On Curating, “Queer Curating” special issue (forthcoming Summer 2018)
- “Only the Stupid Are Overt: Covert Censorship in the American Museum,” ed. Catha Paquette, In and Out of Sight: Censorship Then and Now. (New York, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018).
- “John Waters Queer Ethics,” Exh. Cat., Baltimore Museum of Art, (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2018).
- “Why I Hate Diversity,” Art Journal, vol 76, nos 3-4. (Spring, 2018)
- “Queer Geometry: Anthropomorphism in the work of Leon Polk Smith,” exh. cat., Munson Williams Proctor Art Institute, October 2017.
- “Naked Politics: The Art of Eros 1955-1975” in Difficult Queers, eds. Chris Reed and Jongwoo Kim (New York: Routledge, 2017). Reprinted in Kritische Berichte, edited by Linda Herschel and Änne Söll (Kromsdorf/Weimar: Jonas Verlag, Summer 2017)
- “Robert Mapplethorpe’s Queer Classicism,” Robert Mapplethorpe—The Photographs, eds. Paul Martineau and Britt Salvesen (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2016).
- “Fashioning Queer Activism,” A Queer History of Fashion, eds. Valerie Steele and Fred Dennis (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), pp. ; reprinted in Newsweek, January 20, 2014.
- “Dada’s Mama: Richard Hamilton’s Queer Pop,” Art History (April 2012): pp. 337-353; also published in the book British Art and the Cultural Field, 1939–69, eds. Lisa Tickner and David Peters Corbett (London: Thames & Hudson, 2012).
- “Two Faced Truths: Robert Indiana’s Queer Semiotic,” in Robert Indiana: New Perspectives, eds. Allison Unruh and Simon Salama-Caro (New York: Hanje Catz 2011), pp. 217-267.
- “The Sexuality of Abstraction: Agnes Martin,” in Agnes Martin, eds. Lynne Cooke and Karen Kelly (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), pp. 135-159.
- “‘Committing the Perfect Crime’: Sexuality, Assemblage and the Postmodern Turn in American Art,” Art Journal, vol. 67, no. 1 (Spring 2008), pp. 38-54.
- “Energy Made Visible: Jackson Pollock, Herbert Matter and the Vitalist Tradition,” a chapter in the exhibition catalogPollock Matters, ed. Ellen Landau (Boston College Press, University of Chicago Press, 2007), pp. 59-72.
- Co-editor, with Brad Epps (Harvard University), of a special Monique Wittig memorial issue of the journal GLQ (vol. 13, no. 4, 2007) entitled Monique Wittig at the Crossroads of Criticism, and co-author of “Wittig’s Materialist Utopia and Radical Critique” (pp. 423-54), the lead essay in the collection, which also includes essays by Judith Butler, Robyn Wiegman, and others.
- “‘The Senators Were Revolted:’ Homophobia and the Culture Wars,” a chapter in A Companion to Contemporary Art Since 1945, ed. Amelia Jones (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), pp. 231-248.
- “The Silent Camp: Queer Resistance and the Rise of Pop Art,” in Visions of a Future: Art and Art History in Changing Contexts, eds. Kornelia Imesch and Hans-Jörg Heusser (Zurich: Swiss Institute for Art Research, 2004), pp. 147-58.
- “John Cage’s Queer Silence; or, How to Avoid Making Matters Worse,” GLQ, vol. 5, no. 2 (April 1999), pp. 231-252; reprinted in Writings Through John Cage: Music, Poetry and Art, eds. Bernstein and Hatch (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), pp. 41-61.
- “Dismembership: Jasper Johns and the Body Politic,” in Performing the Body/Performing the Text, eds. Amelia Jones and Andrew Stephenson (New York, London: Routledge, 1999), pp. 170-85.
- “The Art of Code: Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg,” in Significant Others, ed. Whitney Chadwick (New York, London: Thames and Hudson, 1992), pp. 189-208; reprinted in Likovne Besede/Artwords, Ljubljana, no. 38 (December 1996), pp. 122-31.
Affiliations
- Director, Doctoral Program in Visual Studies
- Co-Founder, New York State Arts and Crafts Alliance
- President Emeritus, Leslie Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art
- Cofounder, Queer Caucus for Art, College Art Association