Acknowledgements

Applin, Jo

Save Cite Share

Free

Acknowledgements

Jo Applin

Eccentric Objects: Rethinking Sculpture in 1960s America

Acknowledgements

Author

Jo Applin

PublisherYale University Press

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00043.002

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-15441

Acknowledgements

I have accrued many debts during the writing of this book. Many individuals and institutions have provided invaluable assistance, advice and counsel, for which I am immensely thankful. The first debt is, unquestionably, to Briony Fer, both for her advice and inspiration as supervisor of the PhD project on which this book is based, and also and importantly, for her continued support and encouragement. It is entirely down to her that I do what I do, and she remains the ideal reader for whom I write and from whose work I continue to learn how to think about and look at art. I am also enormously grateful to Mignon Nixon and Alex Potts, who were important early readers of this work; their support, as well as their ground-breaking scholarship, continues to be a crucial touchstone for my own thinking about sculpture. Conversations and seminars at UCL during my time as a graduate student impacted on this project in ways that are perhaps not always obvious, except to me. Thanks go to the community of scholars I worked and learnt with there, and also to the group of students and teachers I was fortunate to work with at Essex University (particularly Dawn Ades and Neil Cox), where I completed my MA dissertation under the exacting and rewarding supervision of Margaret Iversen.

A Postdoctoral Fellowship funded by the Henry Moore Foundation allowed me to take the first steps towards turning my PhD into a book-shaped object and I would like to thank Penelope Curtis, Martina Droth, Jon Wood and the Foundation for their support over the last few years. I was fortunate to be able to complete the manuscript during a period of research leave from my home institution funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, for which I remain grateful. All my colleagues and students in the History of Art Department at the University of York continue to provide the best kind of scholarly community in which to write, think and teach. I consider myself very fortunate to work in such a collegial and friendly place.

Other individuals who have generously shared their time, thoughts and resources with me in the United Kingdom and elsewhere include Carey Ascenzo, Marianne Aebersold, Peter Ballantine, Mel Bochner, Frank Del Deo, Ken Fernandez, Ann Freedman, Mona Hadler, Hans Hammerskiöld, halley k harrisburg, Anna Katz, Gary Kuehn, Constance Lewallen, Ricky Manne, Juliet Myers, Veronica Roberts, Michael Rooks, Barry Rosen, Elizabeth A. T. Smith, Keith Sonnier, Elyse Speaks and Jill Weinberg. Thanks also go to staff at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Guggenheim Museum, New York; and at the Smithsonian Institution, Museum of American Art, Washington DC; the H. C. Westermann Study Center at the Smart Museum, University of Chicago.

Encounters with several of the main subjects of the following chapters provided many fond memories and experiences. In particular, Lee Bontecou responded to my questions about her work with grace and good humour, for which I remain extremely grateful. Claes Oldenburg and his studio have been incredibly generous in offering their advice and support, and Lucas Samaras kindly shared many of his early works and photograph albums with me, thoughtfully answering all my questions. The late Alan Frumkin generously spent an afternoon in New York with me talking about H. C. Westermann’s work and life, as he unpacked his private collection of works, gifts, toys and illustrated letters sent to him by the artist.

I have given a number of papers relating to this project, for which I received invaluable feedback; respondents and participants at those events will recognise their input in the following pages. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank those institutions that invited me to present papers on this material, including the Courtauld Institute of Art, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Nottingham, Essex University, McGill University, the Slade School of Fine Art, and Princeton University. Colleagues and scholars whose conversations, comments, support and encouragement have been influential on this book (and my life during the period spent writing it) include James Boaden, Simon Baker, Yve-Alain Bois, Julia Bryan-Wilson, Tim Clark, David Peters Corbett, Penelope Curtis, Anna Dezeuze, Jason Edwards, Stephanie Fay, Hal Foster, Tamar Garb, Tom Gretton, Mark Godfrey, Mark Hallett, Sarah Hamill, Andrew Hemingway, Julia Kelly, Christina Kiaer, Ed Krčma, Sabine Kriebel, Lisa le Feuvre, Amanda Lillie, Jeremy Melius, James Meyer, Richard Meyer, Alistair Rider, Joy Sleeman, Robert Slifkin, Catherine Spencer, Frances Stracey, Tamara Trodd, Anne Wagner and Michael White. Special thanks go to those scholars whose friendship and support have proven particularly invaluable in recent years: Jane Elliott, Anthony Geraghty, Mary Hunter, Anna Lovatt, John David Rhodes, Harriet Riches, and Sarah Victoria Turner. Anonymous readers of the manuscript provided me with advice and comments which I was able to incorporate in the final text. They helped make this a better book and I am enormously grateful to them.

The illustrations in the book were paid for by a generous publication grant from the Henry Moore Foundation, and also with support from the History of Art Department at the University of York, and I am hugely grateful for the support of both. Heartfelt thanks go to my editor at Yale University Press, Gillian Malpass, who has enthusiastically supported this project from the outset. Many thanks also to Emily Angus, Sarah Faulks, Charlotte Grievson, Elizabeth McWilliams and Katharine Ridler at Yale for all their hard work on my behalf.

The stresses, worries and prolonged period of frenetic travel involved in a life lived between Montreal and York during the most intense period of this book’s writing were tempered at all times – and across far too long a distance these past few years – by my family’s entirely appropriate bewilderment at the oddity of an academic life. For that, and many other things (including the recent addition to our raucous clan of my beautiful, funny niece and nephew), I am grateful to my home support team: my older sister, Karen, my twin sister Lisa and my mum, Marion. My last thanks go, of course, to Richard Taws.

Previous chapter

Base text size -

Chapter images ()