Fred Lionel Orton (born 1945, Coventry, Warwickshire England) is an English art historian. His initial training was at
Coventry College of Art
Coventry School of Art and Design is part of Coventry University in Coventry, West Midlands in the UK. It is home to a number of departments that teach and research in the areas of art, media and design including the Department of Industrial ...
in painting as a Dip.A,D student. He extended his experience in the History and Development of Art initially at the
Courtauld Institute in London and then professionally as a scholar of art history and art theory at the
University of Leeds.
Scholarship
Orton published an influential essay in 1991 in the ''Oxford Art Journal''
that argued that
Harold Rosenberg, the critic who coined the term "
Action painting", developed the concept as a result of his commitment to
Marxism rather than to the photographs of
Jackson Pollock in action. According to art critic Stephen Moonie, Orton's essay was one of the first attempts to define the term, offering a "political reading" which, "as Orton shows with great diligence", was a continued effort in Rosenberg's career.
With
Griselda Pollock he wrote ''Avant-Gardes and Partisans Reviewed'' and ''Vincent van Gogh: Artist of his Time''. A social historian of art, he is influenced by
Marxist theory
Marxist philosophy or Marxist theory are works in philosophy that are strongly influenced by Karl Marx's materialist approach to theory, or works written by Marxists. Marxist philosophy may be broadly divided into Western Marxism, which drew fro ...
.
His 1994 book ''Figuring Jasper Johns'' investigated the relationship between
Jasper Johns and
Frank O'Hara.
Orton is also one of the editors of a collection on the
Ruthwell and
Bewcastle crosses,
[ and with ]Catherine Karkov
Catherine E. Karkov is professor of History of Art and head of the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies at the University of Leeds. Her research centres on early medieval art, especially Anglo-Saxon art, and she has published ...
edited an important collection on Anglo-Saxon stone sculpture; he contributed one essay, and three other essays are responses to his.[
]
Books published
*''Vincent van Gogh: Artist of his Time'' (London: Phaidon, 1978)
*''Figuring Jasper Johns'' (London: Reaktion, 1994)
*''Avant-Gardes and Partisans Reviewed'' (with Griselda Pollock; Manchester University Press, 1996)[Reviews of ''Avant-Gardes and Partisans Reviewed'':
*
*
]
*''Theorizing Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture'' Medieval European Studies 4. (Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2003, edited with Catherine Karkov)[Reviews of ''Theorizing Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture'':
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]
*''Fragments of History: Rethinking the Ruthwell and Bewcastle Monuments'' (Manchester University Press, 2007, with Ian N. Wood
Ian N. Wood, (born 1950) is an English scholar of early medieval history, and a professor at the University of Leeds who specializes in the history of the Merovingian dynasty and the missionary efforts on the European continent. Patrick J. Gear ...
and Clare Lees
Clare A. Lees is professor of medieval literature and history of the language, and Director of the Institute of English Studies, University of London.
Education
Lees earned her Bachelor of Arts and master's degree at the University of Leeds befo ...
)[Reviews of ''Fragments of History'':
*
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]
*''Aesthetic Thinking: Essays on Intention, Painting, Action, and Ideology'' (Brill, 2022)
Selected articles
; republished in Orton and
Pollock, ''Avant-Gardes and Partisans Reviewed'', 3-17.[
]
References
1949 births
Living people
Academics of the University of Leeds
Social historians
British art historians
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