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T. J. Clark on Bruegel
T. J. Clark offers profound insights into Bruegel's art, where we encounter a reality formed from wholly worldly materials, yet suspended between belief and disbelief.
Surprising, questioning, challenging, the Pocket Perspectives series presents timeless works by writers and thinkers who have shaped the conversation across the arts, visual culture, and history. Celebrating the undiminished vitality of their ideas today, these covetable and collectable little books embody the best of Thames & Hudson.
Surprising, questioning, challenging, the Pocket Perspectives series presents timeless works by writers and thinkers who have shaped the conversation across the arts, visual culture, and history. Celebrating the undiminished vitality of their ideas today, these covetable and collectable little books embody the best of Thames & Hudson.
- GenresArtNonfictionEssays
88 pages, Hardcover
Published October 22, 2024
5 people are currently reading
36 people want to read
About the author
T.J. Clark
35 books65 followersTimothy James Clark often known as T.J. Clark, is an art historian and writer, born in 1943 in Bristol, England.
Clark attended Bristol Grammar School. He completed his undergraduate studies at St. John's College, Cambridge University, he obtained a first-class honours degree in 1964. He received his Ph.D. in art history from the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London in 1973. He lectured at the University of Essex 1967-1969 and then at Camberwell College of Arts as a senior lecturer, 1970-1974. During this time he was also a member of the British Section of the Situationist International, from which he was expelled along with the other members of the English section. He was also involved in the group King Mob.
In 1973 he published two books based on his Ph.D. dissertation: The Absolute Bourgeois: Artists and Politics in France, 1848-1851 and Image of the People: Gustave Courbet and the Second French Republic, 1848-1851. Clark returned to Britain from his position at the University of California, Los Angeles and Leeds University to be chair of the Fine Art Department in 1976. In 1980 Clark joined the Department of Fine Arts at Harvard University. Chief among his Harvard detractors was the Renaissance art historian Sydney Freedberg, with whom he had a public feud.
In 1988 he joined the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley where he held the George C. and Helen N. Pardee Chair as Professor of Modern Art until his retirement in 2010.
In 1991 Clark was awarded the College Art Association’s Distinguished Teaching of Art History Award. Notable students include Brigid Doherty, Hollis Clayson, Thomas E. Crow, Serge Guilbaut, Margaret Werth, Nancy Locke, Christina Kiaer, Michael Kimmelman, Michael Leja, John O'Brian, Bridget Alsdorf, Matthew Jackson, Joshua Shannon, and Jonathan Weinberg.
In the early 1980s, he wrote an essay, "Clement Greenberg's Theory of Art," critical of prevailing Modernist theory, which prompted a notable and pointed exchange with Michael Fried. This exchange defined the debate between Modernist theory and the social history of art. Since that time, a mutually respectful and productive exchange of ideas between Clark and Fried has developed.
Clark's works have provided a new form of art history that take a new direction from traditional preoccupations with style and iconography. His books regard modern paintings as striving to articulate the social and political conditions of modern life.
Clark received an honorary degree from the Courtauld Institute of Art in 2006. He is a member of Retort, a Bay Area-based collective of radical intellectuals, with whom he authored the book Afflicted Powers: Capital and Spectacle in a New Age of War, published by Verso Books.[1]
Clark attended Bristol Grammar School. He completed his undergraduate studies at St. John's College, Cambridge University, he obtained a first-class honours degree in 1964. He received his Ph.D. in art history from the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London in 1973. He lectured at the University of Essex 1967-1969 and then at Camberwell College of Arts as a senior lecturer, 1970-1974. During this time he was also a member of the British Section of the Situationist International, from which he was expelled along with the other members of the English section. He was also involved in the group King Mob.
In 1973 he published two books based on his Ph.D. dissertation: The Absolute Bourgeois: Artists and Politics in France, 1848-1851 and Image of the People: Gustave Courbet and the Second French Republic, 1848-1851. Clark returned to Britain from his position at the University of California, Los Angeles and Leeds University to be chair of the Fine Art Department in 1976. In 1980 Clark joined the Department of Fine Arts at Harvard University. Chief among his Harvard detractors was the Renaissance art historian Sydney Freedberg, with whom he had a public feud.
In 1988 he joined the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley where he held the George C. and Helen N. Pardee Chair as Professor of Modern Art until his retirement in 2010.
In 1991 Clark was awarded the College Art Association’s Distinguished Teaching of Art History Award. Notable students include Brigid Doherty, Hollis Clayson, Thomas E. Crow, Serge Guilbaut, Margaret Werth, Nancy Locke, Christina Kiaer, Michael Kimmelman, Michael Leja, John O'Brian, Bridget Alsdorf, Matthew Jackson, Joshua Shannon, and Jonathan Weinberg.
In the early 1980s, he wrote an essay, "Clement Greenberg's Theory of Art," critical of prevailing Modernist theory, which prompted a notable and pointed exchange with Michael Fried. This exchange defined the debate between Modernist theory and the social history of art. Since that time, a mutually respectful and productive exchange of ideas between Clark and Fried has developed.
Clark's works have provided a new form of art history that take a new direction from traditional preoccupations with style and iconography. His books regard modern paintings as striving to articulate the social and political conditions of modern life.
Clark received an honorary degree from the Courtauld Institute of Art in 2006. He is a member of Retort, a Bay Area-based collective of radical intellectuals, with whom he authored the book Afflicted Powers: Capital and Spectacle in a New Age of War, published by Verso Books.[1]
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
October 30, 2024
on most days, if pressed, i would probably say Bruegel is the best european painter, truly goated. he's got everything: modernist picture planes, strange figuration, beautiful tableaus, etc etc (have you looked at The Hunters in the Snow recently? think about how that was completed in 1565), so of course I loved this little book on Bruegel from one of the first serious art historians I encountered back in my undergrad. compelling stuff here on composition and content, mostly loved the little comparative detail about Bruegel's crude outlines of clothing versus the Italian dominated vogue of almost baroque folds. Would've read 500 more pages of Clark on Bruegel
June 25, 2025
Bought this at the Museo Nacional del Prado.
I’ve always enjoyed Brueghel’s paintings - there’s sth earthy and human about all his work and I’m incredibly privileged that I got to see just a small fraction of it up close.
This book goes into a lot of detail and depth in one of Brueghel’s paintings, Land of Cockaigne, and it truly goes into MUCH detail but I’m not complaining about it.
I’ve always enjoyed Brueghel’s paintings - there’s sth earthy and human about all his work and I’m incredibly privileged that I got to see just a small fraction of it up close.
This book goes into a lot of detail and depth in one of Brueghel’s paintings, Land of Cockaigne, and it truly goes into MUCH detail but I’m not complaining about it.
January 6, 2025
A cracking (forgive the cheap yolk) essay by our most reliably perceptive of writers on painting, going deep on Brueghel’s Land of Cockaigne. What’s not to like?
Clark gets to the meat of the matter (what ultimately is Brueghel’s attitude towards mankind?) with far swifter concision than Elizabeth Honig in her book on the subject, which is a softer, more rounded (fudged?) attempt.
Clark is especially good at drawing together the formal and conceptual aspects of a painting. He moves from close observation and pictorial analysis, to finding links across Brueghel’s oeuvre, to then place the artist in relation to his own times, the contemporary moods, ethics, politics, which are then also seen under the reflected light of our own times. What kind of space does the picture create and how does that relate to the subject? How does ‘groundedness vs verticality’ play out in Brueghel’s work more generally? Was Brueghel channeling or challenging the cruelty, derision, snide moralising and pessimism of his society? In what ways do our contemporary forms of over-consumption differ from those of the 16th century?
Clark raises many questions, and it is no bad thing that one isn’t really sure if he’s answered them, since they linger on in the reader’s mind. While some art historians seem to labour on to explain a point as if we were simple minded, Clark always seems to be saying more than we can quite grasp, so that a second or third reading is well worthwhile.
The publishers obviously see these small books as good money makers, being very gift-worthy. A single essay is turned into a small hardback book, filled with images which are welcome even if most of them aren’t strictly necessary for the sake of the text. A nice little book to have, but at £12.99 definitely over priced, at least in terms of content if not form.
Clark gets to the meat of the matter (what ultimately is Brueghel’s attitude towards mankind?) with far swifter concision than Elizabeth Honig in her book on the subject, which is a softer, more rounded (fudged?) attempt.
Clark is especially good at drawing together the formal and conceptual aspects of a painting. He moves from close observation and pictorial analysis, to finding links across Brueghel’s oeuvre, to then place the artist in relation to his own times, the contemporary moods, ethics, politics, which are then also seen under the reflected light of our own times. What kind of space does the picture create and how does that relate to the subject? How does ‘groundedness vs verticality’ play out in Brueghel’s work more generally? Was Brueghel channeling or challenging the cruelty, derision, snide moralising and pessimism of his society? In what ways do our contemporary forms of over-consumption differ from those of the 16th century?
Clark raises many questions, and it is no bad thing that one isn’t really sure if he’s answered them, since they linger on in the reader’s mind. While some art historians seem to labour on to explain a point as if we were simple minded, Clark always seems to be saying more than we can quite grasp, so that a second or third reading is well worthwhile.
The publishers obviously see these small books as good money makers, being very gift-worthy. A single essay is turned into a small hardback book, filled with images which are welcome even if most of them aren’t strictly necessary for the sake of the text. A nice little book to have, but at £12.99 definitely over priced, at least in terms of content if not form.
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December 25, 2024Clark talking about the meaning of a painting with four guys lying on the ground in a world where everything is made out of food: a sausage fence, a lean-to with pies on it, a soft boiled egg with legs running around on its own, a pig with a holstered knife for cutting slices out of it...absolutely perfect reading for Christmas eve. (I'm so full! This can't be heaven, can it?)
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews