Acknowledgments

Curley, John J.

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Acknowledgments

John J. Curley

A Conspiracy of Images: Andy Warhol, Gerhard Richter, and the Art of the Cold War

~There is nothing conspiratorial about the many teachers, colleagues, friends, and family who have made this book possible. To start, it is impossible for me to imagine this project without Christine Mehring and David Joselit. From its origins, their intellect, originality, and personal warmth inspired and guided me. Other faculty members from my time in the...

Author

John J. Curley

PublisherYale University Press

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00001.002

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-19736

Acknowledgments

There is nothing conspiratorial about the many teachers, colleagues, friends, and family who have made this book possible. To start, it is impossible for me to imagine this project without Christine Mehring and David Joselit. From its origins, their intellect, originality, and personal warmth inspired and guided me. Other faculty members from my time in the Department of the History of Art at Yale University have also been crucial to the development of my work, especially Tim Barringer, Alexander Nemerov, and Chris Wood, as well as Michael Hatt, who was head of the Research Department at the Yale Center for British Art. I also owe John Lewis Gaddis in the Department of History significant gratitude for encouraging me to think broadly about the Cold War in relation to artistic production. Whether sitting around a seminar table or on a bar stool, my graduate student cohorts at Yale, especially Gabrielle Gopinath, Ben Lima, Jennifer Raab, Matthew Robb, Rob Slifkin, and Elizabeth Twitchell, provided both intellectual inspiration and important friendships. In terms of my thinking on the postwar period, Rob has been an especially valuable interlocutor. Thanks are also due to my undergraduate adviser at Duke University, Kristine Stiles, for first showing me what art history could be.

The History of Art Department at Yale was also unwavering in its financial support of this project. Additionally, I am grateful for receiving a Leylan Fellowship in the Humanities from the university’s Graduate School of Art and Sciences for my final year in New Haven. A Henry Luce Foundation/ACLS Dissertation Fellowship for the Study of American Art provided funding for a crucial research year. Thanks are also due to Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst (DAAD), which funded two research trips to Germany. Other grants were instrumental during my sabbatical: a Library Research Grant from the Getty Foundation, a visiting scholar position at the Yale Center for British Art, and a Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Research Support Grant (administered by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art in London).

My academic home of the past five years, the Department of Art at Wake Forest University, has been a wonderful place to write and teach, while also providing me significant financial, administrative, and scholarly support. I have learned much from my departmental colleagues, as well as faculty members across the university. I would like especially to recognize David Lubin and Patrick Moran for their engagement with my project and for their perceptive comments on various portions of the text. Kendra Battle and Martine Sherrill provided indispensable and expert help with images, and Tina Boyer helped with some of the German translations. Former students Meaghan Steele and Brittany Bordeaux assisted with some aspects of research.

I have presented numerous aspects of this research and am grateful to both the organizers and audiences of events at the Getty Research Institute, the Andy Warhol Museum, the Courtauld Institute of Art, the National Galleries of Scotland, the College Art Association’s annual meetings, University College Dublin, Yale University, Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the German Studies Association annual conference, and the Reynolda House Museum of American Art. At these events, as well as others, I have benefited from too many conversations and comments to enumerate here. But those dialogues with Bradley Bailey, Stephanie Barron, Tom Crow, Sabine Eckmann, Eckhart Gillen, Heather Gumbert, Rachel Jans, Michael Leja, Cary Levine, Meredith Malone, Peter Nisbet, Jeanne Anne Nugent, Sarah Rich, Victoria Scott, Terry Smith, Luke Smythe, and John-Paul Stonard immediately jump to mind. Thanks are also due to Jeanne, Christine Mehring, and Jon Seydl for including my research in Gerhard Richter: Early Work, 1951–1972, as well as to Molly Donovan at the National Gallery of Art for asking me to write for the Warhol: Headlines exhibition catalogue. Romy Golan and Joshua Shannon deserve special mention for their rigorous engagement with my work; conversations with both pushed the book in new directions and helped shape my revision process.

Librarians, archivists, and curators have also been crucial to the completion of this book. First and foremost is Matt Wrbican, chief archivist at the Andy Warhol Museum. His knowledge of the vast Warhol archive is miraculous, and he has always been unfailingly helpful, whether locating materials or answering a quick question over e-mail. Dietmar Elger has also been essential to this project; his establishment of the Gerhard Richter Archive in Dresden has made important materials available for scholars. Its holdings were crucial to my rethinking aspects of the manuscript. I am also grateful to Gabriele Leschke at Freie Universität in Berlin, Natalia Kardinar at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Dresden, Veronika Kopecky at the Warburg Institute in London, and Dawn Leach at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf for their archival assistance. Gillian Forrester and Elisabeth Fairman also shared their time and expertise with me at the Yale Center for British Art.

I am very grateful to Gerhard Richter for opening his Cologne studio to me on two occasions, in 2006 and 2009. We had illuminating conversations, and he allowed me full access to his studio archives, including ample material from his time in East Germany. Konstanze Ell not only facilitated these visits but has gone above and beyond in helping me locate and gather images for the text.

It has been a joy to work with Yale University Press. I want especially to thank Patricia Fidler and Katherine Boller for their attention to the project and expert guidance through the publication process, as well as Heidi Downey and Mary Mayer for their assistance. I am also extremely grateful to Miranda Ottewell for her expert copy-editing and Jeff Wincapaw for his stunning design. Outside of Yale University Press, Jim Gibbons also provided crucial editorial assistance at an earlier stage of the project. Furthermore, Richard Slovak performed a thorough final review of the manuscript, and Victoria Baker assembled the index. I would also like to offer special thanks to all image providers, especially Greg Burchard at the Andy Warhol Museum, as well as those who waived or significantly reduced fees. Along these lines, I am very grateful to the College Art Association’s Millard Meiss Publication Fund, the Terra Foundation for American Art, and various offices at Wake Forest University for helping subsidize the reproductions in this book.

Last, but certainly not least, this book would not have been completed without my family: especially my parents, John and Karen Curley; my late grandparents, Joe and Nadine Meyer; and my sister, Jennifer Curley. Their love, support, patience, and laughter have always sustained me. My wife’s family, especially Jack and Mary O’Neill, have likewise treated me as one of their own. But, more than anyone, I would like to thank my wife, Morna O’Neill. She has been with me since the start of this project, and her guiding presence can be felt throughout the text. Her fierce intellect, creative brilliance, and shrewd editorial pen are matched only by her love, compassion, and humor. For this and so much more, I dedicate this book to her.

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