Jaleh Mansoor (born August 18, 1975) is an Iranian-born Canadian art historian, critic, and theorist of modern and

contemporary art Contemporary art is the art of today, produced in the second half of the 20th century or in the 21st century. Contemporary artists work in a globally influenced, culturally diverse, and technologically advancing world. Their art is a dynamic com ...

. She is an associate professor in the faculty of Art History, Visual Art and Theory at the

University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a public university, public research university with campuses near Vancouver and in Kelowna, British Columbia. Established in 1908, it is British Columbia's oldest university. The university ranks a ...

Education

After graduating with a B.A. in English and Art History from

Barnard College Barnard College of Columbia University is a private women's liberal arts college in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1889 by a group of women led by young student activist Annie Nathan Meyer, who petitioned Columbia ...

in 1997, Mansoor attended

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

and received her M.A. in 1999, her M.Phil. in 2001 and her Ph.D. in 2007, all in the Department of History of Art and Architecture. While attaining her Ph.D., she studied under the supervision of both

Rosalind Krauss Rosalind Epstein Krauss (born November 30, 1941) is an American art critic, art theorist and a professor at Columbia University in New York City. Krauss is known for her scholarship in 20th-century painting, sculpture and photography. As a critic ...

and

Benjamin Buchloh Benjamin Heinz-Dieter Buchloh (born November 15, 1941) is a German art historian. Between 2005 and 2021 he was the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Modern Art in the History of Art and Architecture department at Harvard University. Education and ca ...

Career

From 2005 to 2011, Mansoor taught at

SUNY Purchase The State University of New York at Purchase (commonly Purchase College or SUNY Purchase) is a Public college, public Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Purchase, New York. It is one of 13 comprehensive colleges ...

, and

Ohio University Ohio University is a Public university, public research university in Athens, Ohio. The first university chartered by an Act of Congress and the first to be chartered in Ohio, the university was chartered in 1787 by the Congress of the Confeder ...

as an assistant professor. Currently she is an associate professor in the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory at

the University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a public research university with campuses near Vancouver and in Kelowna, British Columbia. Established in 1908, it is British Columbia's oldest university. The university ranks among the top three ...

Research interests

Mansoor's area of research includes modern and contemporary art and theory, aesthetic

abstraction Abstraction in its main sense is a conceptual process wherein general rules and concepts are derived from the usage and classification of specific examples, literal ("real" or "concrete") signifiers, first principles, or other methods. "An abstr ...

modernism Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...

, theories of the revolutionary avant-garde, European and American art since 1945,

feminist theory Feminist theory is the extension of feminism into theoretical, fictional, or philosophical discourse. It aims to understand the nature of gender inequality. It examines women's and men's social roles, experiences, interests, chores, and feminist ...

historiography Historiography is the study of the methods of historians in developing history as an academic discipline, and by extension is any body of historical work on a particular subject. The historiography of a specific topic covers how historians ha ...

Marxism Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...

Frankfurt School The Frankfurt School (german: Frankfurter Schule) is a school of social theory and critical philosophy associated with the Institute for Social Research, at Goethe University Frankfurt in 1929. Founded in the Weimar Republic (1918–1933), dur ...

theory,

Autonomia Operaia Autonomia Operaia (Italian: ''Workers' Autonomy'') was an Italian leftist movement particularly active from 1976 to 1978. It took an important role in the autonomist movement in the 1970s, alongside earlier organisations such as ''Potere Operaio'', ...

(Italian Marxism) and critical and curatorial studies. Her teachings at UBC include topics of twentieth-century art, aesthetic abstraction in relation to capitalist abstraction, methodologies, and histories of critical curatorial practice.

Critic and author

Mansoor has been a critic and contributor to art journals including ''

Artforum ''Artforum'' is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art. The magazine is distinguished from other magazines by its unique 10½ x 10½ inch square format, with each cover often devoted to the work of an artist. Notabl ...

'', ''

October October is the tenth month of the year in the Julian and Gregorian calendars and the sixth of seven months to have a length of 31 days. The eighth month in the old calendar of Romulus , October retained its name (from Latin and Greek ''ôct ...

Texte Zur Kunst ''Texte zur Kunst'' is a German contemporary art magazine. History ''Texte zur Kunst'' was founded in 1990 in Cologne by art historian Stefan Germer and art critic Isabelle Graw. It has been published in Berlin since 2000. Since the death of ...

'', and ''The Journal of Aesthetics and Protest.'' She has authored or co-authored monographic studies on artists including

Piero Manzoni Piero Manzoni di Chiosca e Poggiolo, better known as Piero Manzoni (July 13, 1933 – February 6, 1963) was an Italian artist best known for his ironic approach to avant-garde art. Often compared to the work of Yves Klein, his own work anticip ...

Ed Ruscha Edward Joseph Ruscha IV (, ''roo-SHAY''; born December 16, 1937) is an American artist associated with the pop art movement. He has worked in the media of painting, printmaking, drawing, photography and film. He is also noted for creating severa ...

Agnes Martin Agnes Bernice Martin (March 22, 1912 – December 16, 2004), was an American abstract painter. Her work has been defined as an "essay in discretion on inward-ness and silence". Although she is often considered or referred to as a minimalist, Mart ...

Blinky Palermo Blinky Palermo (2 June 1943 – 18 February 1977) was a German abstract painter. Early life and education Palermo was born Peter Schwarze in Leipzig, Germany, in 1943, and adopted as an infant, with his twin brother, Michael, by foster pa ...

Mona Hatoum Mona Hatoum ( ar, منى حاطوم; born 1952) is a British-Palestinian multimedia and installation artist who lives in London. Biography Mona Hatoum was born in 1952 in Beirut, Lebanon, to Palestinian parents. Although born in Lebanon, Hatoum ...

Gerhard Richter Gerhard Richter (; born 9 February 1932) is a German visual artist. Richter has produced abstract as well as photorealistic paintings, and also photographs and glass pieces. He is widely regarded as one of the most important contemporary German ...

, and

Florian Pumhösl Florian Pumhösl (born 1971) is a contemporary artist based in Vienna, mainly known for his works that employ abstract visual language to reflect on the diverse manifestations of modernity. His interests include "historical formal vocabulary of mo ...

. In 2010, Mansoor co-edited an anthology of essays, ''Communities of Sense: Rethinking Aesthetics and Politics'', addressing the conjuncture between politics and

Jacques Rancière Jacques Rancière (; born 10 June 1940) is a French philosopher, Professor of Philosophy at European Graduate School in Saas-Fee and Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris VIII: Vincennes—Saint-Denis. After co-authoring '' ...

’s articulation of aesthetics. The book both argues for a radical potential for equality and heterogeneity within aesthetic fields, but also that these potentials can only be activated by aesthetic strategies. Mansoor has sat as a member on the advisory editorial board since 2013 for '' The Third Rail'', a journal of art, poetics, and politics. Mansoor's first book ''Marshall Plan Modernism: Italian Postwar Abstraction and the Beginnings of Autonomia,'' was published in 2016 by

Duke University Press Duke University Press is an academic publisher and university press affiliated with Duke University. It was founded in 1921 by William T. Laprade as The Trinity College Press. (Duke University was initially called Trinity College). In 1926 Du ...

. In ''Marshall Plan Modernism: Italian Postwar Abstraction and the Beginnings of Autonomia'', Mansoor examines the relationship between culture and politics in the 1950s to the 1970s in Italy and theorizes on their influence to the specific branch of modernist painting and art-making that emerged during this time. She suggests that the culture of Italy during the period directly succeeding the Second World War was both symptomatic of and refusing the process of 'Americanization'. Mansoor explores this claim by examining the works of the three Italian artists

Alberto Burri Alberto Burri (12 March 191513 February 1995; ) was an Italian visual artist, painter, sculptor, and physician based in Città di Castello. He is associated with the matterism of the European informal art movement and described his style as ...

, and

Lucio Fontana Lucio Fontana (; 19 February 1899 – 7 September 1968) was an Argentine-Italian painter, sculptor and theorist. He is mostly known as the founder of Spatialism. Early life Born in Rosario, to Italian immigrant parents, he was t ...

. These artists' practises rejected the nationalist legacy introduced by Italian

Futurism Futurism ( it, Futurismo, link=no) was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy, and to a lesser extent in other countries, in the early 20th century. It emphasized dynamism, speed, technology, youth, violence, and objects such ...

by exploring a more collectivist ideology while approaching art production. She applies critical analysis of these artworks using autonomous

Marxist Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...

theory. Employing the model of capitalist cycles of accumulation by economic theorist

Giovanni Arrighi Giovanni Arrighi (7 July 1937 – 18 June 2009) was an Italian economist, sociologist and world-systems analyst, from 1998 a Professor of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University. His work has been translated into over fifteen languages. Biography ...

, the book offers a view of history that rejects linear narratives of history and considers a more cyclical and repetitive notion of re-emergence, exemplified by the reappearance of form as seen in the works of Burri, Fontana, and Manzoni. In addition, each chapter elaborates upon how the works of these three artists assisted in the different stages of development of capital in Italy. The title of the book is derived from the

Marshall Plan The Marshall Plan (officially the European Recovery Program, ERP) was an American initiative enacted in 1948 to provide foreign aid to Western Europe. The United States transferred over $13 billion (equivalent of about $ in ) in economic re ...

. The title suggests that the development of the Italian state is a product of this economic aid, which also greatly influenced Italian art production.

Bibliography

Books

* ''Marshall Plan Modernism: Italian Postwar Abstraction and the Beginnings of Autonomia''. Duke University Press, 2016

Chapters

* “Making Human Junk.” In ''Sensible Politics: The Visual Culture of Nongovernmental Activism'' (edited by Meg McLagan and Yates McKee), pp. 81–94. New York: Zone Books, 2012 * “Representation.” In ''Keywords for Radicals'' (edited by Kelly Fritsch and Clare O’Connor), pp. 351 – 357. London and San Francisco: AK Press, 2016 * “The Hidden Abode Beyond/Beneath/Behind the Factory Floor, Gendered Labour, and The Human Strike: Claire Fontaine’s Italian Marxist Feminist Politics.” In ''Companion to Feminist Art Practice and Theory'' (edited by Maria Elena Buszek and Hilary Robinson). New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2019

Articles

* ''“Material Value: On Piero Manzoni at Gagosian.”, pp. 89-90. Artforum, May 2009'' * “A Spectral Universality: Mona Hatoum’s Biopolitics of Abstraction.”, pp. 49 – 74. ''October'', no. 133, Summer 2010
“Poetics, Commitment: Ayreen Anastas’s M*Bethlehem and Pasolini Pa Palestine.”
pp. 55 – 79. ''Journal of Aesthetics and Protest'' no. 8, Fall 2011
“Opacity, Transparency, Monochrome: Notes on Form and Historicity.”
pp. 43–48. ''The Third Rail'' issue 2, Winter 2014 * “Unveiling and / or Re-masking: Notes on the Political Dialectics of the Opacity of the Sign.”, pp. 70 – 81. ''Texte zur Kunst'' no. 106, Summer 2017

Reviews

* “Missed Encounters.” Review of Rosalyn Deutsche, ''Hiroshima After Iraq.'' In ''Art Journal'', vol. 70, no. 3., Fall 2011, pp. 106–109 * Review of T.J. Demos, ''The Migrant Image: The Art and Politics of Documentary during Global Crisis.'' In ''Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication,'' 7, no. 2., Spring 2014, pp. 243–47 * Review of Anthony White, ''Lucio Fontana: Between Utopia and Kitsch.'' In ''College Art Association Reviews'', December 2013, pp. 1 –3

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mansoor, Jaleh Living people 1975 births Canadian art historians University of British Columbia faculty Barnard College alumni Columbia University alumni Canadian art critics Canadian art curators Canadian women curators