Christopher Bucklow (born 1957) is a British artist and art-historian. His work has been exhibited internationally and is held in numerous public collections including the

Guggenheim Museum The Guggenheim Museums are a group of museums in different parts of the world established (or proposed to be established) by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Museums in this group include: Locations Americas * The Solomon R. Guggenhei ...

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

(MoMA), Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco (SFMoMA), and

The Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

among others. He has received residencies at

The British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docume ...

, London, the

Banff Center for the Arts Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, formerly known as The Banff Centre (and previously The Banff Centre for Continuing Education), located in Banff, Alberta, was established in 1933 as the Banff School of Drama. It was granted full autonomy as ...

, Alberta, and The Centre for Studies in British Romanticism, Grasmere. Bucklow is best known for his ongoing photographic series ''Guests'' (1993–present) and his improvisational paintings from the series ''To Reach Inside A Vault'' (2006–present). He is the author of numerous books and essays including ''The Sea of Time and Space'' (

Wordsworth Trust The Wordsworth Trust is an independent charity in the United Kingdom. It celebrates the life of the poet William Wordsworth, and looks after Dove Cottage in the Lake District village of Grasmere where Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy Wordswor ...

, 2004), "This is Personal: Blake and Mental Fight" in ''Blake & Sons, Lifestyles and Mysticism in Contemporary Art'' (University College, Cork, 2005), ''What is in the Dwat: The Universe of Guston’s Final Decade'' (Wordsworth Trust, 2007), and the co-author of '' Bacon and the Mind: Art,

Neuroscience Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system (the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system), its functions and disorders. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, developme ...

and

Psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between ...

'' (Thames & Hudson, 2019).

Life and work

Bucklow was born in Flixton, Greater Manchester, England. He graduated with a degree in art history in 1978. Between 1978 and 1995 he worked as a curator in the Prints & Drawings Department at the

Victoria & Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...

, London where he researched

Romanticism Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century, and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate ...

, photography, and developed an interest in the work of

William Blake William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his life, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual art of the Romantic Age. ...

(British, 1757 – 1827). An account of Bucklow's career as a curator and the forces that propelled his transition to art praxis can be found in "Rhetoric and Motive in the Writing of Art History: A Shapeshifter’s Perspective" in ''Remaking Art History'' (

Routledge Routledge () is a British multinational publisher. It was founded in 1836 by George Routledge, and specialises in providing academic books, journals and online resources in the fields of the humanities, behavioural science, education, law ...

, New York City; 2007). Bucklow's early work (1989–91) was conceptual and sculptural, often taking the form of plant species that he altered genetically or grafted together. In the 1990s he created two bodies of photographic work, ''The Beauty of the World'' (1991) and ''Guest'' - also known as ''Tetrarchs,'' that were foundational for Britain's contemporary negative-less photography movement''.'' ''Guests'' was created using a 30 x 40-inch

pinhole camera A pinhole camera is a simple camera without a lens but with a tiny aperture (the so-called '' pinhole'')—effectively a light-proof box with a small hole in one side. Light from a scene passes through the aperture and projects an inverted image ...

, built by Bucklow, with thousands of

aperture In optics, an aperture is a hole or an opening through which light travels. More specifically, the aperture and focal length of an optical system determine the cone angle of a bundle of rays that come to a focus in the image plane. An ...

s to make unique

cibachrome Ilfochrome (also commonly known as Cibachrome) is a dye destruction positive-to-positive photographic process used for the reproduction of film transparencies on photographic paper. The prints are made on a dimensionally stable polyester base as ...

chromogenic In chemistry, the term chromogen refers to a colourless (or faintly coloured) chemical compound that can be converted by chemical reaction into a compound which can be described as "coloured". There is no universally agreed definition of the term. ...

prints. ''Tetrarchs'' were created using either a 40 x 60-inch camera, or one with a 40 x 100 inches

plate Plate may refer to: Cooking * Plate (dishware), a broad, mainly flat vessel commonly used to serve food * Plates, tableware, dishes or dishware used for setting a table, serving food and dining * Plate, the content of such a plate (for example: ...

size. ''Guest'' (1993–present) features

silhouette A silhouette ( , ) is the image of a person, animal, object or scene represented as a solid shape of a single colour, usually black, with its edges matching the outline of the subject. The interior of a silhouette is featureless, and the silhou ...

s of persons that appear to the artist in dreams. Friends, family, and fellow artists like

Matthew Barney Matthew Barney (born March 25, 1967) is an American contemporary artist and film director who works in the fields of sculpture, film, photography and drawing. His works explore connections among geography, biology, geology and mythology as well ...

and

Adam Fuss Adam Fuss (born 1961) is a British photographer. Early life Adam Fuss was born in England in 1961. His father manufactured women's coats and his mother was an Australian fashion model. Fuss's father suffered a stroke in 1963 and required cons ...

are featured individually in the work as a collective of figures drawn by the multiple solar images directed through the 25,000

s in Bucklow's camera. His interest in personal mythology,

Jungian Analytical psychology ( de , Analytische Psychologie, sometimes translated as analytic psychology and referred to as Jungian analysis) is a term coined by Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist, to describe research into his new "empirical science" ...

dream A dream is a succession of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that usually occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. Humans spend about two hours dreaming per night, and each dream lasts around 5 to 20 minutes, althou ...

psychology, metaphor and the use of personification was continued in his subsequent paintings. ''To Reach Inside A Vault'' is a series of large scale improvisational paintings in which a '' commedia dell'arte'' technique is used to generate the subjects or plot. These paintings were exhibited in Bucklow's 2017 retrospective ''Said Now, For All Time'' at the

Southampton City Art Gallery The Southampton City Art Gallery is an art gallery in Southampton, southern England. It is located in the Civic Centre on Commercial Road. The gallery opened in 1939 with much of the initial funding from the gallery coming from two bequests, o ...

, UK.

Public collections

, New York

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum at 1071 Fifth Avenue on the corner of East 89th Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It is the permanent home of a continuously exp ...

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (widely referred to as The Modern) is an art museum of post-World War II art in Fort Worth, Texas with a collection of international modern and contemporary art. Founded in 1892, The Modern is located in the c ...

Dallas Museum of Art The Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) is an art museum located in the Arts District of downtown Dallas, Texas, along Woodall Rodgers Freeway between St. Paul and Harwood. In the 1970s, the museum moved from its previous location in Fair Park to the Art ...

The Wordsworth Trust, Grasmere

Honolulu Museum of Art The Honolulu Museum of Art (formerly the Honolulu Academy of Arts) is an art museum in Honolulu, Hawaii. The museum is the largest of its kind in the state, and was founded in 1922 by Anna Rice Cooke. The museum has one of the largest single co ...

Herzliya Museum of Art

High Museum of Art The High Museum of Art (colloquially the High) is the largest museum for visual art in the Southeastern United States. Located in Atlanta, Georgia (on Peachtree Street in Midtown, the city's arts district), the High is 312,000 square feet (28, ...

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Blanton Museum of Art The Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art (often referred to as the Blanton or the BMA) at the University of Texas at Austin is one of the largest university art museums in the U.S. with 189,340 square feet devoted to temporary exhibitions, permanent col ...

Cleveland Museum of Art The Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) is an art museum in Cleveland, Ohio, located in the Wade Park District, in the University Circle neighborhood on the city's east side. Internationally renowned for its substantial holdings of Asian and Egyptian ...

Yale Center for British Art Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the worl ...

Norton Museum, Palm Beach Perez Art Museum Miami

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art, and wa ...

Los Angeles County Museum of Art The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Page Museum). LACMA was founded in 19 ...

Publications

*Bucklow, Christopher. ‘The Lens Within the Heart’ in Martin Harrison (ed.) ''Bacon and the Mind: Art, Neuroscience and Psychology'', The Estate of

Francis Bacon Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban (; 22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626), also known as Lord Verulam, was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. Bacon led the advancement of both ...

& Thames & Hudson, London, 2019. . (A study of psychological sources of Francis Bacon's imagery). *Bucklow, Christopher. ''Nantucket Sleighride'',

& Ball Press, 2017. . (A study of the iconography of dreams). *Bucklow, Christopher. ''Life on Mars'',

& Ball Press, 2017. (A study of the generative phases leading to the creation of artworks). *Bucklow, Christopher. ‘The Child Comes as Softly as Snow’, essay in ''

'', Catalogue, Fundacion Mapfre, Madrid, 2011, pp.159–171. (An iconographical study of the myths underlying Fuss’ work). *Bucklow, Christopher. ‘St John's Apocalypse: Revelation, Resurrection, Rhetoric’, essay in ''Signs of the Apocalypse/Rapture'', Front Forty Press, Chicago, 2008, n.p. (An essay on dreaming and the personal motives of prophets). *Bucklow, Christopher. ''What is in the Dwat, The Universe of

Philip Guston Philip Guston (born Phillip Goldstein, June 27, 1913 – June 7, 1980), was a Canadian American painter, printmaker, muralist and draftsman. Early in his five decade career, muralist David Siquieros described him as one of "the most promising ...

’s Final Decade'',

. 1 June 2007. (An iconographical study of Guston's late work). *Bucklow, Christopher. ‘Rhetoric and Motive in Writing Art History: a Shape Shifter’s Perspective’, in Elizabeth C. Mansfield (ed.), ''Making Art History'',

, New York, 2007. (An essay on the personal motives of art historians). *Bucklow, Christopher. ‘This is Personal:

Blake Blake is a surname which originated from Old English. Its derivation is uncertain; it could come from "blac", a nickname for someone who had dark hair or skin, or from "blaac", a nickname for someone with pale hair or skin. Another theory, presuma ...

and Mental Fight’, in ''Blake & Sons, Lifestyles and Mysticism in Contemporary Art'', University College, Cork, 2005 pp.131 – 139. (An essay on the many versions of ‘Blake’ that scholars have created). *Mellor and Hambourg, David Alan and Maria Morris. ''Christopher Bucklow: Guest'', Blindspot Publications, New York, October 2004. Essays by David Alan Mellor and Maria Morris Hambourg. 50 colour plates. *Bucklow, Christopher. ‘William Blake: The Sea of Time and Space’, ''If This Be Not I'',

and the

, 2004, pp.115–120. (An essay on William Blake and the invention of religion). *''If This Be Not I'',

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

and

The Wordsworth Trust The Wordsworth Trust is an independent charity in the United Kingdom. It celebrates the life of the poet William Wordsworth, and looks after Dove Cottage in the Lake District village of Grasmere where Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy Wordswor ...

, 2004 (book). Essays by Marina Warner, Adam Phillips, Roger Malbert, Introduction by James Putnam. *Bucklow, Christopher. ''Seven Beginnings to Guest,'' Artereal Gallery, Sydney, Australia, 2006 (Catalogue contains seven accounts of the possible genesis of the series).

Monographs

*2017 Alex Faulkner et al. ''Said Now, For All Time'',

. Preface by Martin Harrison. *2015 Alex Faulkner and Christopher Bucklow, ''Dimitri & Wenlop'', Upton Noble, Ball Press, . *2004 Prof David Alan Mellor et al. ''Christopher Bucklow: Guest'', Blindspot Publications, New York. *2004 Marina Warner et al. ''If This Be Not I'', British Museum, London &

, Grasmere, With an interview by Adam Philips.

References

External links

chrisbucklow.com

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bucklow, Christopher Photographers from Lancashire People from Flixton, Greater Manchester Living people 1957 births British contemporary artists