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Those Passions: On Art and Politics
384 pages, Hardcover
Published March 25, 2025
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About the author
T.J. Clark
35 books64 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
April 15, 2025
I am so grateful for learning about T.J. Clark while reading Robert Pippin's After the Beautiful--Pippin describes Clark as a "left Hegelian" theorist of art (which from Pippin is complimentary), in contrast with the more familiar (to analytic philosophers anyway) work of Arthur Danto, who theorized a pseudo-Hegelian "end of art" arriving when Andy Warhol showed that the only thing essential to art was the concept of art itself (Danto's central example is the fact that Warhol's Brillo Boxes could be physically indistinguishable from the real thing and all that matters is that they are deemed art).
Here is what Pippin says about Clark (and Fried too):
One can say simply that there is a great deal more at stake in Hegel when the question is the historical fate of art and, accordingly, a great deal more at stake in the accounts of Clark and Fried, something tied to the historical, civilizational project definitive of the world in which such art was made. The question that animates all three accounts and others like them is the simple, sweeping question of what it means that human beings make art, how it is that this activity is so significant to them, how it could be that this sense of its significance could change, often radically, and still be identified as the making of significant art. (After the Beautiful, p. 71)
That understanding of art as world-historical, as a concentrated form of human self-consciousness, of working out political, philosophical self-understanding, is expressed throughout this collection of essays. And the Hegelian idea that art's distinctive contribution to Absolute Spirit (distinguishing it from philosophy and religion) is the place of "sensuous particularity" is so clearly demonstrated by Clark's pointing to details of paintings and photographs that are so easy to overlook but once pointed out so obvious that it conclusively proves the Hegelian point.
Here is what Pippin says about Clark (and Fried too):
One can say simply that there is a great deal more at stake in Hegel when the question is the historical fate of art and, accordingly, a great deal more at stake in the accounts of Clark and Fried, something tied to the historical, civilizational project definitive of the world in which such art was made. The question that animates all three accounts and others like them is the simple, sweeping question of what it means that human beings make art, how it is that this activity is so significant to them, how it could be that this sense of its significance could change, often radically, and still be identified as the making of significant art. (After the Beautiful, p. 71)
That understanding of art as world-historical, as a concentrated form of human self-consciousness, of working out political, philosophical self-understanding, is expressed throughout this collection of essays. And the Hegelian idea that art's distinctive contribution to Absolute Spirit (distinguishing it from philosophy and religion) is the place of "sensuous particularity" is so clearly demonstrated by Clark's pointing to details of paintings and photographs that are so easy to overlook but once pointed out so obvious that it conclusively proves the Hegelian point.
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October 30, 2025rumbled on about Clark's latest collection a bit here.
July 14, 2025
Superb book. I will write on it asap.
August 4, 2025
My wife picked up a review of this in the FT. Something in the review sparked my enthusiasm. I have to say that the actual writing about painting here is stunning. The essay on Brueghel, I now know a speciality of Clarke's, finds fresh ways of illuminating what we experience when we look at a great painting. I got a lot out of this essay and also those on Velasquez and David.
It has certainly changed how I look at art, taking care to dwell on the significance of everything in the picture and not forgetting that much lies in an individual brush stroke. Talking about art is difficult and these essays are certainly exemplars of how to do it passionately and unpretentiously.
However, the book then starts to run into trouble. There is an essay on Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project (The Arcades Project). But this is not announced. Clarke starts his analysis in media res, without introduction or context. I think, to be fair, that this was a piece originally published in a volume dedicated to Benjamin. But here it seems a frustration to any coherent communication. Given what follows, I'm astonished that he doesn't invest more in getting his message across.
Then the book descends into comically vulgar-Marxist verbiage.
Clarke, a Brit, seems to think that a lawful killing of a hoodlum by police in London was a skirmish in some "class war". His employment of vulgar-Marxist rhetoric in art criticism is pretentious and, were he not canvassing serious issues, comical. Lenin would have rolled his eyes at something so artless.
It almost got marked down to two stars for that but, that it salvaged three, is a testament to the Brueghel piece.
Incidentally, while reading this I visited the National Gallery of Ireland and had an opportunity to reconnect with Velasquez' Kitchen Maid with the Supper at Emmaus. Now, there's a painting worthy of a political analysis.
It has certainly changed how I look at art, taking care to dwell on the significance of everything in the picture and not forgetting that much lies in an individual brush stroke. Talking about art is difficult and these essays are certainly exemplars of how to do it passionately and unpretentiously.
However, the book then starts to run into trouble. There is an essay on Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project (The Arcades Project). But this is not announced. Clarke starts his analysis in media res, without introduction or context. I think, to be fair, that this was a piece originally published in a volume dedicated to Benjamin. But here it seems a frustration to any coherent communication. Given what follows, I'm astonished that he doesn't invest more in getting his message across.
Then the book descends into comically vulgar-Marxist verbiage.
Vulgar Marxism provides simple and manageable stereotypes. ... standard vulgar-Marxist vintage as spoken by Marxists in grade-B movies about the heroic exploits of the FBI. There is no analysis, no subtlety, there is the blurred image of an opponent, a vague memory of party slogans and bang! Off goes the cannon.
Paul Karl Feyerabend, "Marxist fairytales from Australia", in Science in a Free Society
Clarke, a Brit, seems to think that a lawful killing of a hoodlum by police in London was a skirmish in some "class war". His employment of vulgar-Marxist rhetoric in art criticism is pretentious and, were he not canvassing serious issues, comical. Lenin would have rolled his eyes at something so artless.
It almost got marked down to two stars for that but, that it salvaged three, is a testament to the Brueghel piece.
Incidentally, while reading this I visited the National Gallery of Ireland and had an opportunity to reconnect with Velasquez' Kitchen Maid with the Supper at Emmaus. Now, there's a painting worthy of a political analysis.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews