Mark A. Cheetham

Biography

My research centres on the imbrications of artwriting and art making in modern and contemporary art. I have written books and articles on the history, theory, and current practice of abstract art, the reception of Immanuel Kant’s thinking in the visual arts and the discipline of art history, on art historical methodology, and on recent Canadian and international art. The historiography and methodology of art history and the field of Visual Culture Studies are ongoing research interests, as is contemporary art in Canada and abroad, from both curatorial and academic perspectives. I was the Project Director of a 3-year SSHRC initiative called CACHET (Canadian Art Commons for History of Art Education & Training), 2013-16, which linked five institutions and 20 researchers. See www.ArtCan.ca. My current research interests fall in two areas: ecological art in its relations to earlier landscape practices and the importance of analogy in art history. My book Landscape into Eco Art: Articulations of Nature since the ‘60s will be published by Penn State UP in early 2018. My exhibition Struck by Likening: The Power & Discontents of Artworld Analogies will be on view at the McMaster University Museum of Art from September – December 2017. I am also part a national research project addressing settler-colonial practices in the art history of Canada. My teaching focuses on European, American, and Canadian art, art theory, and visual culture from the mid 18thcentury to the present. I supervise doctoral and postdoctoral projects across these geographical, cultural, and temporal coordinates.

Research Interest

Modern, Contemporary, and Canadian Art