Peter Plagens (born 1941) is an American artist, art critic, and novelist based in New York City.Online Archive of California
Peter Plagens papers, 1938-2014
Retrieved January 18, 2018.Smith, Roberta

''The New York Times'', February 7, 2018. Retrieved January 18, 2018.Wilkin, Karen. "Peter Plagens," ''The Hudson Review'', Spring 2018. He is most widely known for his longstanding contributions to ''Artforum''Newman, Amy

New York: Soho Press, 2000. Retrieved January 17, 2018. and ''

Newsweek ''Newsweek'' is an American weekly online news magazine co-owned 50 percent each by Dev Pragad, its president and CEO, and Johnathan Davis (businessman), Johnathan Davis, who has no operational role at ''Newsweek''. Founded as a weekly print m ...

'' (senior writer and art critic, 1989–2003),Newsweek
"Peter Plagens,"
Authors, ''Newsweek''. Retrieved January 21, 2018. and for what critics have called a remarkably consistent,Pagel, David. "Push It to the Edge," ''Los Angeles Times'', December 1, 2004. five-decade-long body of abstract formalist painting.Hickey, Dave. "The Jabberwocky and the gorilla in the Corner," ''Peter Plagens: An Introspective'', Los Angeles: Fisher Gallery, University of Southern California, 2004, p. 16–25. Plagens has written three books on art, ''Bruce Nauman: The True Artist'' (2014),Plagens, Peter
''Bruce Nauman: The True Artist''
London: Phaidon, Inc., 2014. Retrieved January 17, 2018. ''Moonlight Blues: An Artist's Art Criticism'' (1986)Plagens, Peter
''Moonlight Blues: An Artist's Art Criticism''
Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1986. Retrieved January 17, 2018. and ''Sunshine Muse: Modern Art on the West Coast, 1945-70'' (1974),Plagens, Peter

Berkeley: UC Press, 2000; re-issue of New York: Praeger, 1974. Retrieved January 17, 2018. and two novels, ''The Art Critic'' (2008)Plagens, Peter
''The Art Critic''
New York: www.ArtNet.com (2008) and e-book, Hol Art Books, 2012. Retrieved January 17, 2018. and ''Time for Robo'' (1999).Plagens, Peter
''Time for Robo''
Seattle: Black Heron Press, 1999. Retrieved January 17, 2018. He has been awarded major fellowships for both his painting (

John Simon Guggenheim Foundation The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation was founded in 1925 by Olga and Simon Guggenheim John Simon Guggenheim (December 30, 1867 – November 2, 1941) was an American businessman, politician and philanthropist. Life Born in Philadelphi ...

,John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
Peter Plagens
Fellows. Retrieved January 18, 2018.

National Endowment for the Arts The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal ...

) and his writing (

Andy Warhol Foundation Andy Warhol (; born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director, and producer who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationsh ...

, National Endowment for the Arts).ArtsWriters Grant Program
"Peter Plagens,"
Grantees, Creative Capital/Andy Warhol Foundation, 2008. Retrieved January 21, 2018.USC Fisher Gallery. ''Peter Plagens: An Introspective'', Los Angeles: Fisher Gallery, University of Southern California, 2004. Plagens's work has been featured in surveys at the

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 ...

,Museum of Modern Art
"Peter Plagens,"
Artists, Retrieved January 21, 2018.

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, Los Angeles, California, Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Pa ...

(LACMA),

Whitney Museum The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District, Manhattan, Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude ...

, and PS1, and in solo exhibitions at the

Hirshhorn Museum The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall, in Washington, D.C., the United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was des ...

and

Las Vegas Art Museum The Las Vegas Art Museum (LVAM) was an art museum in Las Vegas, Nevada. It was formerly located in a building shared with the Sahara West Library branch of the Las Vegas-Clark County Library District in Las Vegas, NV. The museum closed in 2009. T ...

.Clark, Joseph. "Waxing Idealistic: Post-art melancholy effortlessly reigns in Peter Plagens Painting, 1989-2000," ''LVcitylife'', November 30, 2000. In 2004, the USC Fisher Gallery organized and held a 30-year traveling retrospective of his work. Critics have contrasted the purely visual dialogue his art creates—often generating more questions than answers—with the directness of his writing;Zona, Louis A. "Afterword''," ''Peter Plagens: An Introspective'', Los Angeles: Fisher Gallery, University of Southern California, 2004, p.27. they also contend that the visibility of his bylines as a critic has sometimes overshadowed his artmaking—unduly. Saltz, Jerry
Review, Peter Plagens
''New York Magazine'', March 4, 2018. Retrieved January 18, 2018. ''Los Angeles Times'' critic David Pagel described Plagens's painting as a "fusion of high-flying refinement and everyday awkwardness" with an intellectual savvy, disdain for snobbery and ungainliness he likened to

Willem de Kooning Willem de Kooning (; ; April 24, 1904 – March 19, 1997) was a Dutch-American abstract expressionist artist. He was born in Rotterdam and moved to the United States in 1926, becoming an American citizen in 1962. In 1943, he married painter El ...

's work. Reviewing Plagens's 2018 exhibition,Nancy Hoffman Gallery
Peter Plagens, January 25–March 10, 2018
Retrieved January 18, 2018. ''New York Times'' critic

Roberta Smith Roberta Smith (born 1948) is co-chief art critic of ''The New York Times'' and a lecturer on contemporary art. She is the first woman to hold that position. Early life Born in 1948 in New York City and raised in Lawrence, Kansas. Smith studied at ...

called the show an "eye-teasing sandwich of contrasting formalist strategies," the hard-won result of a decade of focused experimentation.

Life and career

Plagens was born in

Dayton, Ohio Dayton () is the sixth-largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Montgomery County. A small part of the city extends into Greene County. The 2020 U.S. census estimate put the city population at 137,644, while Greater Day ...

in 1941 and grew up in Los Angeles. He attended the

University of Southern California The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in C ...

, where he majored in painting (BFA, 1962) and drew cartoons for the

Daily Trojan The ''Daily Trojan'', or "DT," is the student newspaper of the University of Southern California. The newspaper is a forum for student expression and is written, edited, and managed by university students. The paper is intended to inform USC s ...

. He left USC an abstract painter, influenced by

Hans Hofmann Hans Hofmann (March 21, 1880 – February 17, 1966) was a German-born American painter, renowned as both an artist and teacher. His career spanned two generations and two continents, and is considered to have both preceded and influenced Abstrac ...

Richard Diebenkorn Richard Diebenkorn (April 22, 1922 – March 30, 1993) was an American painter and printmaker. His early work is associated with abstract expressionism and the Bay Area Figurative Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. In the late 1960s he bega ...

and

Elmer Bischoff Elmer Nelson Bischoff (July 9, 1916 – March 2, 1991) was a visual artist in the San Francisco Bay Area. Bischoff, along with Richard Diebenkorn and David Park, was part of the post-World War II generation of artists who started as abstract pai ...

, which set him at odds with the somewhat conservative painting faculty at Syracuse University (MFA, 1964) where he did his graduate studies.Holo, Salma and Peter Plagens. "Why an 'Introspective," ''Peter Plagens: An Introspective'', Los Angeles: Fisher Gallery, University of Southern California, 2004, p.7–15.'' He moved back to California in 1965 and took an Assistant Curator position at the Long Beach Museum of Art; soon after, he approached ''Artforum'' editor Phil Leider for work as a reviewer—at five dollars per review—in order to keep up with the Los Angeles art scene. In 1966, Plagens accepted a teaching position at the University of Texas, remaining until 1969, when he accepted a position at California State University, Northridge. He taught there until 1978, and at the University of California, Berkeley (1972), the University of Southern California (1978–80), and the University of North Carolina (1980–4), where he also chaired the art department. During his time at Cal State, Plagens shared a 3,000-square-foot studio with painter Walter Gabrielson on the same block in Pasadena as artist

Bruce Nauman Bruce Nauman (born December 6, 1941) is an American artist. His practice spans a broad range of media including sculpture, photography, neon, video, drawing, printmaking, and performance. Nauman lives near Galisteo, New Mexico. Life and work ...

's; in 1975, he appeared in Nauman's short film ''Pursuit''.Knight, Christopher
"What Is an Artist? Peter Plagens's 'Bruce Nauman' Illuminates,'"
''Los Angeles Times'', June 7, 2014. Retrieved January 21, 2018.Pocaro, Alan
"Every Damn Moment Counts: A Conversation With Painter and Critic Peter Plagens,"
''New City'', October 26, 2018. Retrieved January 18, 2018. Plagens began exhibiting professionally in 1967, and was featured in the 1971 LACMA show, "24 Young Los Angeles Artists" and the 1972

Whitney Biennial The Whitney Biennial is a biennial exhibition of contemporary American art, typically by young and lesser known artists, on display at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, United States. The event began as an annual exhibition in ...

.Livingston, Jane and Maurice Tuchman. ''24 Young Los Angeles Artists'', Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1971. He has shown at Nancy Hoffman Gallery in New York since 1975, and showed regularly at the Jan Baum Gallery in Los Angeles (1977–1992) and

Jan Cicero Gallery Jan Cicero Gallery was a contemporary art gallery founded and directed by Jan Cicero (née Pickett), which operated from 1974 to 2003, with locations in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois and Telluride, Colorado. The gallery was noted for its early, ex ...

in Chicago (1986–98). Muchnic, Suzanne. Review Peter Plagens exhibition at Jan Baum Gallery, ''The Los Angeles Times'', November 18, 1977.Greenstein, M.A. "Whitewash: Peter Plagens at Jan Baum Gallery," ''Artweek'', February 6, 1992.Bucholz, Barbara
"The Art of Peter Plagens,"
''Chicago Tribune'', May 1, 1998. Retrieved January 18, 2018. His 2004 retrospective at USC traveled to

Columbia College Chicago Columbia College Chicago is a Private college, private art college in Chicago, Illinois. Founded in 1890, it has 5,928https://about.colum.edu/effectiveness/pdf/spring-2021-student-profile.pdf students pursuing degrees in more than 60 undergra ...

and the

Butler Institute of American Art The Butler Institute of American Art, located on Wick Avenue in Youngstown, Ohio, United States, was the first museum dedicated exclusively to American art. Established by local industrialist and philanthropist Joseph G. Butler, Jr., the museum h ...

in Akron.Tranber, Dan. "Critic Gives a Lesson, in an abstract sort of way," ''The Cleveland Plain Dealer'', August 18, 2005.Wachunas, Tom. Review, ''Dialogue'', September–October 1996. Plagens married the painter,

Laurie Fendrich Laurie Fendrich (born 1948) is an American artist, writer and educator based in New York City, best known for geometric abstract paintings that balance playfulness and sophistication.Heartney, Eleanor. "Laurie Fendrich," ''Art in America'', June ...

, in 1981. They moved to New York City in 1985 where they continue to reside, while also maintaining a studio outside the city.Einspruch, Franklin
"Star-Crossed Painters: Laurie Fendrich and Peter Plagens,"
''artcritical'', February 14, 2011. Retrieved January 18, 2018.

Artwork and reception

Critic

Dave Hickey David Hickey (December 5, 1938 – November 12, 2021) was an American art critic who wrote for many American publications including ''Rolling Stone'', ''ARTnews'', '' Art in America'', ''Artforum'', '' Harper's Magazine'', and '' Vanity Fair''. ...

, among others, has characterized Plagens as "an irrevocably abstract formalist painter," who, regardless of fashion, has rooted his work in modernist and Abstract Expressionism syntax, formal rigor, and a willful embrace of dissonance and contradictions—such as hard-edged geometry and messy, gestural abstraction, "happy accident and copious correction," and beauty and intentional clunkiness.Artner, Alan G
"Appreciating the Abstract,"
''Chicago Tribune'', March 13, 2005. Retrieved January 18, 2018. David Pagel wrote that Plagens's 2004 retrospective traced "a remarkably consistent arc" of stubbornly held abstract work of "sophisticated inelegance." Plagens works improvisationally, sometimes pushing his paintings to the edge of failure, by his own admission and according to critics. He maintains there is no symbolism in his work; he often appends enigmatic titles to his work upon completion, however, that indicate his ruminations while in the studio. Throughout his career, he has produced works on paper that generally correspond in style to his paintings, incorporating collaged photographs, fragments of commercial packaging, and colored and textured paper.

Art, 1970–1999

Plagens's early work featured single, emphatic shapes—circles with wedges removed, diamonds, trapezoids, and thin letter "C"-like rings—which he placed on vivid red-orange or creamy white color fields that sometimes disintegrated at the canvas edges into irregular, soft bands of subtle color.Russell, John. Review of exhibition at Nancy Hoffman Gallery, ''The New York Times'', February 15, 1975. Increasingly minimal works, such as ''Cleveland Defaults on Its Debts'' (1979) or ''Cubist Landscape'' (1980), have been recognized for carefully calibrated compositions that challenged conventional rules about balance and probed the line between elegance and awkwardness, and friction and harmony.Raynor, Vivien

''The New York Times'', January 6, 1978. Retrieved January 18, 2018. In pivotal paintings of the mid-1980s, such as ''Wheels of Wonder'' (1985) and ''Wedge of Life'' (1987), Plagens incorporated angular, eccentric polygons, greater surface variation and a new sense of movement that reviewers such as

Grace Glueck Grace Glueck (July 24, 1926 – October 8, 2022) was an American arts journalist. She worked for ''The New York Times'' from 1951 until the early 2010s. Early life Glueck was born in New York City on July 24, 1926. Her father, Ernest, worked a ...

deemed "witty balancing acts." Glueck, Grace
"Art: Abstract Painters Regain That Old Charisma,"
''The New York Times'', March 8, 1985. Retrieved January 17, 2018.Henry, Gerrit. ''Peter Plagens at Nancy Hoffman Gallery," ''Art in America'', February, 1985.'' During this time, he also created the drawing series "My Father Worked in Advertising" (1986), which featured dappled, abstract expressionist-like areas around the edges over which he painted and collaged fields of color and hard-edged and irregular shapes. Critics noted a building complexity and immediacy in Plagens's output from 1989 to 2000, the result of a more expansive mix of materials, markmaking and palettes.Kimmelman, Michael

''The New York Times'', January 3, 1997. Retrieved January 18, 2018. Cotter, Holland. "Peter Plagens," ''Art in America'', Summer 1990. In paintings such as ''Benton Way and Sunset, LA, 6/28/55, 1:40 pm'' (1989) and ''Learning of the Tragic News'' (1996),Plagens, Peter
''Learning of the Tragic News'', 1996
askART. Retrieved January 18, 2018. he introduced expressive drips and gestural, free-form marks and shapes, that

Michael Kimmelman Michael Kimmelman (born May 8, 1958) is the architecture critic for ''The New York Times'' and has written about public housing, public space, landscape architecture, community development and equity, infrastructure and urban design. He has report ...

wrote had "a looping calligraphic eloquence" recalling

Arshile Gorky Arshile Gorky (; born Vostanik Manoug Adoian, hy, Ոստանիկ Մանուկ Ատոյեան; April 15, 1904 – July 21, 1948) was an Armenian-American painter who had a seminal influence on Abstract Expressionism. He spent the last years of his ...

and Richard Diebenkorn.Dickensheets, Scott. "Peter Plagens," ''ARTnews'', March 2001. Of particular note were the small, brightly colored, discordant geometric forms that Plagens set against primarily off-white and slate-gray backdrops, which critics suggested "snapped" his rhythmic compositions into place.

Art, 2000–

Between 2000–2003, Plagens sought to create a greater degree of tension In a series of untitled works on paper by subdividing them into two fields: one containing fluid, expressive shapes and linear forms on gray or khaki-colored grounds, atop another, featuring configurations of jarring, hard-edged rectangles set on black or off-white fields.Plagens, Peter
''Untitled (VIII)'', 2003
Cover painting featured on ''Peter Plagens: An Introspective'', Los Angeles: Fisher Gallery, University of Southern California, 2004. Retrieved January 18, 2018. In later paintings, he dispensed with the subdivision, creating more centralized compositions that featured flat, irregular, near-fluorescent color shapes directly painted on neutral grounds of contrasting gestural shapes and marks. In the 2010s, Plagens garnered some of the best reviews of his careerRhodes, David
"Peter Plagens,"
''The Brooklyn Rail'', March, 2018. Retrieved January 18, 2018. for shows that critics described, variously, as "jaunty, accomplished disquisitions" or heated, "intimate discourses"Jones, Darren
"Peter Plagens,"
''Artforum'', March 2018. Retrieved January 17, 2018. exploring the co-existence of incompatible styles, formal concepts and paint application in single works. These paintings (e.g., ''The Ides of October'' or ''A Literary Sensibility'',Plagens, Peter
''A Literary Sensibility'', 2017
Nancy Hoffman Gallery. Retrieved January 18, 2018. both 2017) and works on paper employed three main visual elements: a gestural, improvisational field of squiggles, loops and loose grids partially blotted out by a large, irregularly edged expanse of opaque orange, pink, lavender-gray or aqua, upon which Plagens set hard-edged, irregular polygons built from six or seven shards of bright color that he dubbed "color badges."Church, Amanda. "Peter Plagens," ''ARTnews'', June 2011, p. 107. Critics suggested that these badges mediated an ongoing flux between coherent wholes and fluid parts, order and disorder, freedom and restraint, establishing an uneasy, but engaging, "strange harmony." Plagens's recent works on paper, such as ''The Sinister Man'' 2 (2018), have largely relied on centralized compositions, anchored by collaged photographs or found paper with text or graphic images that are contained by colored-paper or painted rectangular fields. Smaller in scale and less off-kilter in composition, these works have been seen as expressing a greater intimacy and poignancy than Plagens's paintings.

Writing

Plagens has been a prominent art critic for more than five decades, producing numerous reviews, essays and articles about artists and the art world. He also authored the monograph, ''Bruce Nauman: The True Artist'' (2014), and two books of art criticism, ''Moonlight Blues: An Artist's Art Criticism'' (1986), and ''Sunshine Muse: Modern Art on the West Coast, 1945-70'' (1974, re-issued 2000),Livingston, Jane. Review of "Sunshine Muse: Contemporary Art on the West Coast", "Art in America", March, 1975. Other critics characterize Plagens's writing as "stylish, clear-eyed," literate, direct and candid. In a 1974 ''New York Times'' review of ''Sunshine Muse'',

Hilton Kramer Hilton Kramer (March 25, 1928 – March 27, 2012) was an American art critic and essayist. Biography Early life Kramer was born in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and was educated at Syracuse University, receiving a bachelor's degree in English; Col ...

described Plagens as "the only amusing writer ever to appear in the pages of ''Artforum''."Kramer, Hilton
"The Decline and Confusion Of West Coast Art,"
''The New York Times'', December 15, 1974. Retrieved January 18, 2018. ''Los Angeles Times'' critic

Christopher Knight Christopher or Chris Knight may refer to: Film and television *Christopher Knight (actor) (born 1957), American actor * Christopher Knight (filmmaker), blogger and filmmaker * Chris Knight (''Neighbours''), fictional character in the soap opera '' ...

wrote that Plagens's Bruce Nauman monograph probed the question of what an artist is "with wit, insight and a prodigious amount of research, plus a good deal of personal experience"; other reviewers welcomed the book's first-person, near-confessional engagement with an artist frequently approached through academic jargon.Mobilio, Albert
"'Bruce Nauman: The True Artist,' by Peter Plagens,"
''New York Times'', December 7, 2014. Retrieved January 21, 2018.Vine, Richard
"True Nauman: Peter Plagens on His New Volume on the Artist,"
Interviews, ''Art in America'', April 21, 2014. Retrieved January 21, 2018.Slifkin, Robert
"Truly, Skeptical," review of Peter Plagens, ''Bruce Nauman: The True Artist''
''Art Journal'', Summer 2015, p. 93–6. Retrieved January 21, 2018. ''Sunshine Muse'', deemed "vivacious and valuable" in ''The New York Times'', has often been quoted by critics exploring West Coast art and artists since its publication in 1974.Raynor, Vivien

''The New York Times'', January 5, 1979. Retrieved January 21, 2018.Raynor, Vivien

''The New York Times'', March 24, 1991. Retrieved January 18, 2018.Martin, Douglas

''The New York Times'', May 15, 2010. Retrieved January 21, 2018. Plagens began writing for ''Artforum'' in 1966 and became a contributing editor in 1971 and an associate editor, West Coast in 1974. He was a senior writer and art critic for ''Newsweek'' from 1989 to 2003 and a contributing editor until 2010. Since 2011, he has written reviews and articles for ''The Wall Street Journal'' and blogged for the blogsite of the National Arts Journalism Program, ''ARTicles'', since 2010.Sonoma State University. ''Black White Color Life: Recent Works on Paper by Laurie Fendrich and Peter Plagens'', Rohnert Park, CA: Sonoma State University, 2017. He has been published in ''The New York Times'', ''The Los Angeles Times'', ''

Art in America ''Art in America'' is an illustrated monthly, international magazine concentrating on the contemporary art world in the United States, including profiles of artists and genres, updates about art movements, show reviews and event schedules. It i ...

'',Art in America
"Peter Plagens,"
Authors, ''Art in America''. Retrieved January 21, 2018. ''

ARTnews ''ARTnews'' is an American visual-arts magazine, based in New York City. It covers art from ancient to contemporary times. ARTnews is the oldest and most widely distributed art magazine in the world. It has a readership of 180,000 in 124 countri ...

'',ARTnews
"Peter Plagens,"
Author, ''ARTnews''. Retrieved January 21, 2018. ''

Art+Auction Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas. There is no generally agreed definition of what ...

'', ''

The Nation ''The Nation'' is an American liberal biweekly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's '' The Liberator'', an abolitionist newspaper tha ...

'',The Nation
"Peter Plagens,"
Authors, ''The Nation''. Retrieved January 21, 2018. ''

L.A. Weekly ''LA Weekly'' is a free weekly alternative newspaper in Los Angeles, California. It was founded in 1978 by Jay Levin, who served as president and editor until 1991. Voice Media Group sold the paper in late 2017 to Semanal Media LLC, whose paren ...

'', and ''

Bookforum ''Bookforum'' is an American book review magazine devoted to books and the discussion of literature that was based in New York City, New York. The magazine was founded in 1994 and announced in December of 2022 it would cease publishing after ...

'', among many publications.Plagens, Peter. "Nick Miller: Drawing Life from Landscape," ''Nick Miller: Truckscapes—Landscapes from a Mobile Studio'', Dublin: Rubicon Gallery, 2007. Plagens has written catalogue essays for the artists

Jim DeFrance Jim DeFrance (born, 1940 Alliance, Nebraska; died 2014 Los Angeles, California) was a West Coast artist known for his abstract, shaped panel paintings and meticulous constructions. He utilized a reductive process while incorporating architectural ...

,Plagens, Peter. Catalogue essay
''Jim DeFrance''
Orange, CA: Orange Coast Community College, 2018. Retrieved January 17, 2018.

Tony DeLap Tony DeLap (November 4, 1927 – May 29, 2019) was a West Coast artist, known for his abstract sculpture utilizing illusionist techniques and meticulous craftsmanship. As a pioneer of West Coast minimalism and Op Art, DeLap's oeuvre is a te ...

,Plagens, Peter and Bruce Guenther
''Tony DeLap''
New York: Hudson Hills Press, 2001. Retrieved January 17, 2018.

Don Gummer Don Gummer (born December 12, 1946) is an American sculptor. His early work concentrated on table-top and wall-mounted sculpture. In the mid-1980s, he shifted his focus to large free-standing works, often in bronze. In the 1990s, he added a var ...

,Plagens, Peter and Don Gummer
''The Lyrical Constructivist: Don Gummer's Sculpture''
Evansville, IN: Evansville Art Museum, 2001. Retrieved January 17, 2018. Ron Linden,Plagens, Peter. "Curator's Statement," ''Ron Linden'', New York: CUE Art Foundation, 2007. Nick Miller and

Edward 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 ...

,Plagens, Peter and Dave Hickey, Anne Livet
''The Works of Edward Ruscha''
New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1982. Retrieved January 17, 2018. and for the exhibitions "Clay's Tectonic Shift: John Mason, Ken Price, and

Peter Voulkos Peter Voulkos (born Panagiotis Harry Voulkos; 29 January 1924 – 16 February 2002) was an American artist of Greek descent. He is known for his abstract expressionist ceramic sculptures, which crossed the traditional divide between ceramic cr ...

, 1956–1968"Plagens, Peter. "Foreword,
''Clay's Techtonic Shift: John Mason, Ken Price, Peter Voulkos''
Getty Publications: Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery, Scripps College, 2012. Retrieved January 17, 2018. and "Pasadena to Santa Barbara" (both 2012).Plagens, Peter. "Cities, two tales, and art,
''Pasadena to Santa Barbara''
Santa Barbara: Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 2012. Retrieved January 17, 2018. Plagens has also written two novels: ''The Art Critic'' (2008) and ''Time for Robo'' (1999). ''Time for Robo'' incorporates themes of time travel, perception, the nature of reality, and the end of time, among others. Reviewers compared its themes and "Chinese box," stories-within-stories style to the novels of

Thomas Pynchon Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Jr. ( , ; born May 8, 1937) is an American novelist noted for his dense and complex novels. His fiction and non-fiction writings encompass a vast array of subject matter, genres and themes, including history, music, scie ...

Kurt Vonnegut Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007) was an American writer known for his satirical and darkly humorous novels. In a career spanning over 50 years, he published fourteen novels, three short-story collections, five plays, and ...

Jim Dodge Jim Dodge (born 1945) is an American novelist and poet whose works combine themes of folklore and fantasy, set in a timeless present. He has published three novels—''Fup'', ''Not Fade Away,'' and ''Stone Junction''—and a collection of poetry a ...

, and

Robert Coover Robert Lowell Coover (born February 4, 1932) is an American novelist, short story writer, and T.B. Stowell Professor Emeritus in Literary Arts at Brown University. He is generally considered a writer of fabulation and metafiction. Background C ...

.Publishers Weekly
''Time for Robo''
''Publishers Weekly'', May 1999. Retrieved January 21, 2018. ''The Art Critic'' (2008) is a ''

roman à clef ''Roman à clef'' (, anglicised as ), French for ''novel with a key'', is a novel about real-life events that is overlaid with a façade of fiction. The fictitious names in the novel represent real people, and the "key" is the relationship ...

'' satirizing the contemporary New York art world from the perspectives of a well-known art critic, a contemporary sculptor and an art publishing assistant.Halasz, Piri
"The Art Critic by Peter Plagens,"
''artcritical'', January 1, 2009. Retrieved January 21, 2018.Triplett, Leah
"The Artist and the Critic,"
''Bookslut'', January 2013. Retrieved January 21, 2018.

Awards and collections

Plagens has received recognition from major art institutions for both his art and writing. He has received painting fellowships from the

(1972), National Endowment for the Arts (1985, 1977), and the Brown Foundation at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2009, 2017).Museum of Fine Arts, Houston/Dora Maar House. ''Brown Foundation Fellows Annual Report'' Houston: Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, April 2007. His writing has been awarded fellowships from the

(Creative Capital Arts Writers Grant, 2008) and National Endowment for the Arts (art criticism, 1973), and he was one of four senior fellows in the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University in 1998.''The New York Times''.
"Four Universities Announce Recipients of Journalism Fellowships,"
''The New York Times'', May 13, 1998. Retrieved January 18, 2018. Plagens's art has been acquired by numerous public and corporate collections, including the

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), is an art museum located in the Houston Museum District of Houston, Texas. With the recent completion of an eight-year campus redevelopment project, including the opening of the Nancy and Rich Kinder Build ...

,Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Peter Plagens, ''The Crust of Life–Humanity (To Sybil) ''
Collections. Retrieved January 21, 2018. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden,Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
Peter Plagens, ''Conspiracies Are Synchronizations of Existing Forces (20-75)''
Collection. Retrieved January 21, 2018. Denver Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Baltimore Museum of Art,

Albright-Knox Gallery The Buffalo AKG Art Museum, formerly known as the Albright–Knox Art Gallery, is an art museum at 1285 Elmwood Avenue, Buffalo, New York, in Delaware Park. the museum's Elmwood Avenue campus is temporarily closed for construction. It hosted e ...

,Albright-Knox Art Gallery
"Peter Plagens,"
Retrieved January 21, 2018. Museum of New Mexico,New Mexico Museum of Art
"Material Matters: Selections from the Joann and Gifford Phillips Gift,"
Press Releases, April 9, 2015. Retrieved January 18, 2018. and

Ackland Art Museum The Ackland Art Museum is a museum and academic unit of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It was founded through the bequest of William Hayes Ackland (1855–1940) to The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It is located a ...

,Ackland Art Museum
Peter Plagens, ''Untitled'', 1975
Collection. Retrieved January 21, 2018. among others.

References

External links

Peter Plagens website

Peter Plagens papers, 1938-2014
Online Archive of California
Interview with Vasari21

Peter Plagens
Nancy Hoffman Gallery {{DEFAULTSORT:Plagens, Peter 1941 births Living people Writers from Dayton, Ohio American art critics 20th-century American painters American male painters 21st-century American painters 21st-century American male artists 20th-century American novelists 21st-century American novelists American male novelists Journalists from Ohio 20th-century American male writers 21st-century American male writers Novelists from Ohio 20th-century American non-fiction writers 21st-century American non-fiction writers American male non-fiction writers 20th-century American male artists