Thomas Lawson (artist)

Thomas Lawson (born 1951, Glasgow, Scotland) is an artist, writer, magazine editor, and Dean of the School of Art at California Institute for the Arts.Smithsonian Institution Archives of American Art
"Oral history interview with Thomas Lawson, 2018 August 9-10,"
Collections. Retrieved 14 January 2018.California Institute of the Arts
Thomas Lawson
Administration and Staff. Retrieved 14 January 2018. He emerged as a central figure in ideological debates at the turn of the 1980s about the viability of painting through critical essays, such as "Last Exit: Painting" (1981), and as one of the artists in the loosely defined "Pictures Generation" group.Miles, Christopher. "Thomas Lawson", ''Artforum'', Summer 2007.Lawson, Thomas. "Last Exit: Painting," ''Artforum'', October, 1981, p. 40–7.Eklund, Douglas. ''The Pictures Generation, 1974-1984'', New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2009. He has been described as "an embedded correspondent ndpolemical editorialist"Bovier, Lionel and Fabrice Stroun. "Introduction," ''Mining for Gold: Selected Writings (1979–1996)'', Zurich: JRP, Ringier, 2004. who articulated an oppositional, progressive position for representational painting from within an increasingly reactionary art and media environment.Bankowsky, Jack. "October 1981," ''Artforum'', October 2001.Heartney, Eleanor. "Thomas Lawson: Metro Pictures," ''ARTnews'', March 1984. ''Artforum'' called his approach to the medium "one of the most cogent and controversial" in the 80s.Rothkopf, Scott. "The Painter: Thomas Lawson," ''Artforum'', March 2003.

Lawson has received awards from the John S. Guggenheim Foundation,John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
Thomas Lawson
Fellows. Retrieved 14 January 2018. National Endowment for the Arts and Rockefeller Foundation, among others, and exhibited internationally at galleries and museums including Metro Pictures (New York), Anthony Reynolds (London), the Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), and Le Magasin (Grenoble).Cork, Richard. "Visual Arts: strange paintings by Thomas Lawson," ''The Times'', 30 May 1995.Hammer Museum
"The Undiscovered Country"
Exhibition, 2005. Retrieved 14 January 2018. He was featured in the Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition, "The Pictures Generation" (2009), and "A Forest of Signs: Art in the Crisis of Representation" (1989) at Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MoCA).The Metropolitan Museum of Art
"The Pictures Generation, 1974–1984" (2009)
Exhibitions. Retrieved 14 January 2018.Goldstein, Ann and Mary Jane Jacob
"A Forest of Signs: Art in the Crisis of Representation,"
Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1989. Retrieved 14 January 2018. He has also created temporary public works in New York City, Glasgow, and Newcastle upon Tyne.New York Percent for Art
"Thomas Lawson,"
The Bellgrove Station Project. "Thomas Lawson," Catalogue, 1990.Lawson, Thomas. "Memory Lingers Here," ''A New Necessity, First Tyne International'', Catalogue, Newcastle on Tyne, United Kingdom: Tyne and Wear Museum Services, 1990. Lawson's essays have appeared in numerous anthologies and journals such as ''Artforum'', '' Art in America'',Lawson, Thomas. "Art School Symposium," ''Art in America'', May 2007. ''Flash Art''Lawson, Thomas. "The Uses of Representation: Making Some Distinctions," ''Flash Art'', March/April 1979, p. 37–9. and ''October;''Lawson, Thomas, "Silently, By Means of a Flashing Light," ''October'', #15, 1980. an anthology of his writing, ''Mining for Gold'', was published in 2004.Lawson, Thomas
''Mining for Gold: Selected Writings (1979–1996)'', Zurich: JRP, Ringier, 2004. Retrieved 14 January 2018.
/ref> He has also edited or co-edited the contemporary art journals ''REALLIFE Magazine'', ''Afterall'' and ''East of Borneo''.Katzeff, Miriam, Thomas Lawson, and Susan Morgan (eds). ''REAL LIFE Magazine: Selected Writings and Projects 1979-1994'', New York: Primary Information, 2006.East of Borneo
Contributors
Retrieved 14 January 2018. Lawson lives and works in Los Angeles.

Early life and career

Lawson grew up in Glasgow and developed an early interest in the language of painting. As a teenager, he took classes at the Glasgow School of Art, but found it too conservative and enrolled at the University of St Andrews, where he studied English Language and Literature (graduated, 1973).Lawson, Thomas. "Paying Attention," ''Akademie X Lessons in Art + Life'', London: Phaidon, 2015. He was active in the art scene there, creating an art club and organizing an exhibition of Scottish painter Pat Douthwaite. After enrolling in the Art History graduate program at the University of Edinburgh, he traveled to New York to interview Jasper Johns for his thesis, before graduating in 1975.

Lawson next moved to New York and enrolled in the Art History and Criticism PhD program at CUNY Graduate Center, where he studied with Rosalind Krauss, Linda Nochlin and Robert Pincus-Witten, and alongside postmodern writers Douglas Crimp and Craig Owens. He arrived ahead of the convergence of a flourishing downtown art/punk scene, new critical-artistic practices such as appropriation, brewing ideological debates, and an art-market explosion.Sandler, Irving. ''Art of the Postmodern Era: From the Late 1960s to the Early 1990s'', New York: Harper Collins, 1996. While at CUNY, Lawson began exhibiting art at Artists Space (1977, 1979) and the Drawing Center (1978).Milwaukee Art Museum. ''New Figuration in America'', Milwaukee, WI: Milwaukee Art Museum, 1982, p. 68. He also co-founded ''REALLIFE Magazine'' in 1978 with his wife, writer Susan Morgan, and contributed essays to ''Artforum'', ''Art in America'' and ''Flash Art''. In 1981, he began showing at the newly opened, influential Metro Pictures with artists such as Robert Longo and Cindy Sherman, and later in the decade, showed at the Richard Kuhlenschmidt Gallery in Los Angeles.Marzorati, Gerald. "Artful Dodger," ''Soho News'', 19 September 1980.Drohojowska, Hunter. "Closed Captions/Thomas Lawson", ''Los Angeles Times'', 22 May 1981. Surveys of Lawson's work have since been held at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, the Centre for Contemporary Arts (Glasgow),''Glasgow Herald''. "The Arts in 1990," Review, ''Glasgow Herald'', 21 September 1990. the Battersea Arts Centre (London),Battersea Art Center. "Thomas Lawson," Exhibition materials, "Third Eye Touring Exhibition," Battersea Art Center, November/December 1990. and Goss-Michael Foundation (Dallas).''D Magazine''
"The Best of Big D 2014,"
Culture, ''D Magazine''. August 2014. Retrieved 14 January 2018. He is currently represented by David Kordansky Gallery in Los Angeles.Griffin, Jonathan
"The New Art Dealer,"
''New York Times Style Magazine'', 10 September 2014. Retrieved 14 January 2018. In 1991, Lawson was appointed Dean of the School of Art at California Institute for the Arts (CalArts). In addition to teaching, Lawson has curated or co-curated shows and lecture series at MoCA, PS1, Artists Space, White Columns, the Renaissance Society, LACE, REDCAT Gallery, and Los Angeles Municipal Gallery.David Kordansky Gallery
Thomas Lawson
Artists. Retrieved 14 January 2018.

Work and reception

Lawson is arguably as well known for his critical writing and tenure as Dean of CalArts as for his art. However, critics in the 2000s, such as Andrew Berardini, began suggesting that his painting was due for a reassessment for its role in broadening the parameters of appropriated imagery and offering a nuanced, critical alternative to conceptual art and neo-expressionist painting in the 1980s.Berardini, Andrew. "Thomas Lawson: 1977-1987," ''Art Review'', Summer 2009.Rubinstein, Raphael. "Person, Place and Thing," ''Art in America'', January 2005, p. 104-109.Lally, Phyllis. "Artist Profile: Thomas Lawson," ''Phillips Art Expert'', 6 July 2009. His career is best understood in its entirety, with his complementary practices of artmaking, critical writing, magazine editing, curating and educating collectively addressing key ideological debates of the time.

"The painting wars" (1977–1987)

Lawson emerged in the late 1970s as part of "The Pictures Generation" artists, which included Sherrie Levine, Robert Longo and David Salle, among many.Bowman, Russell. "New Figuration: Background and Definition," ''New Figuration in America'', Milwaukee, WI: Milwaukee Art Museum, 1982, p. 10–5.Rickey, Carrie. "Naïve Nouveau and Its Malcontents," ''Flash Art'', Summer 1980.Crimp, Douglas. "Pictures," ''October'', Spring 1979, p. 75–88. Their work was broadly unified by its critique of modernism's avant-garde myths and embrace of postmodern art-making strategies, media imagery, pop-culture references and simple, sometimes crude, technique and presentation.Drohojowska, Hunter. "Stop Making Sense", ''ARTnews'', October, 1989, p. 146–51.Rickey, Carrie. "Smyth, Schmidt, Smitten," ''Village Voice'', 14 January 1980.Zimmer, William. "Group Exhibition," ''Soho News'', 19 November 1980.Tatransky, Valentin "Group Show," ''Arts Magazine'', 1979.Lawson, Thomas. "Introduction," ''Four Artists: James Birrell, Michael Davey, Gareth Fisher, Thomas Lawson'', New York and Edinburgh: Artists Space and New 57 Gallery, 1979. This approach was bolstered by critical writing from Douglas Crimp, Craig Owens, Hal Foster, and Lawson,Risatti, Howard (ed). ''Postmodern Perspectives: Issues in Contemporary Art'', New York: Prentice Hall, 1999.Miles, Christopher. "The Death of Painting and The Writing of Painting’s Post-Crisis, Post-Critique Future," ''Art Lies'', Issue 47, Summer 2005. who in ''Artforum'', ''Flash Art'' and ''REALLIFE'' called for art that deconstructed dominant media and cultural representations in the face of what he termed "a growing lack of faith in the ability of artists to continue as anything more than plagiaristic stylists." In "Last Exit: Painting" (1981), Lawson championed appropriationist painting as "the perfect camouflage" (due to its very unlikeliness) to infiltrate the art-world and expose stereotypes and conventions, maintaining that the work's hand-made subjectivity and expressive tools tempered its ironic and detached tone.Lawson, Thomas. "Going Public," ''New Art International'', 1990. Crimp (and the others) denounced contemporary painting’s "reactionary expressionism" as fatally compromised; they favored photographic work, like that of Richard Prince or Cindy Sherman.Crimp, Douglas. "The End of Painting," ''October'', Spring 1981, p. 69-86. Lawson argued such work was too declarative, obvious, and likely to lapse into a "bureaucratic continuation" of Conceptualism that would be marginalized in esoteric, avant-garde ghettoes outside the mainstream.

Lawson's own early work was situated at the crux of photography and painting, and combined deadpan, crudely modeled media archetypes (representing family, passion, violence and national iconography), which he isolated on modern, painterly fields of gestural marks or monochromatic grounds.''The Chronicle-Herald.'' "Scottish show opens tonight," ''The Chronicle-Herald'' (Halifax, Canada), 8 August 1979.Casademont, Joan. "Thomas Lawson," ''Artforum'', September 1981, p. 74-5. Decontextualizing overused painting techniques and snapshots drawn from tabloid stories, he sought to reconstitute and question their lost meaning and to expose the hollowness and insensitivity of conditioned responses to spectacle and tragedy.Ratcliff, Carter. "Illustration & Allegory," ''Illustration & Allegory'', Catalogue essay, New York: Brooke Alexander, Inc., 1980.Cathcart, Linda."The Heroic Figure," ''The Heroic Figure'', texts by Linda L. Cathcart and Craig Owens, Houston: Contemporary Arts Museum, 1984, p. 8–12. Critics variously described his work (e.g., ''Don’t Hit Her Again'' or ''Shot for a Bike'', both 1981) as haunted and difficult to like but worthy,English, Christopher. "New Figuration for Old Milwaukee," ''New Art Examiner'', January 1983.Tatransky, Valentin
"Fischl, Lawson, Robinson & Sharpe,"
Catalogue, Buffalo: Hallwalls. Retrieved 9 September 2018. and "hard-headed and thoughtful ..with a punk rock and painterly awareness." Holland Cotter deemed it "painting out on strike," with an "obdurate, stonewalling quality that read like provocation";Cotter, Holland. "Thomas Lawson at Metro Pictures", ''Art in America'', June 1987, p. 156. others, such as Carrie Rickey, found the ambiguity of the work’s intention to be troubling.Kirshner, Judith Russi. "Compassionate Images," ''Artforum'', May 1983, p. 102–3.

In 1983, Lawson began using photographic images of classical architecture and mountain landscapes that connoted institutionalized culture, power and mysticism, which he obscured with veils of painterly, scumbled brushstrokes (and later, dots, pills and paisleys).Levin, Kim. Review, ''Village Voice'', 10 January 1984, p. 59.Donahue, Marlena. Review, ''Los Angeles Herald'', 11 March 1988. Reviewers generally placed works such as ''Metropolis: The Museum'' (1983) or ''The Temple of the Kultur Critic'' (1984), among Lawson's most alluring, but differed on their political efficacy.Leibmann, Lisa. "Thomas Lawson", ''Artforum'', March 1984.Smith, Roberta. "Painting with Two Minds About It," ''Village Voice'', 1984.Kuspit, Donald. "Thomas Lawson", ''Vanguard'', April 1984.Brenson, Michael. "Thomas Lawson," ''The New York Times'', 16 December 1983. Ronald Jones wrote that Lawson successfully subverted cultural expressions of authority, "prov ngthem too slight to thrive outside their incubated logic."Jones, Ronald. "Seeing is Believing: New Paintings by Thomas Lawson," ''Arts Magazine'', Summer 1984, p. 138–140.Silverthorne, Jeanne. "Thomas Lawson, Metro Pictures", ''Artforum'', Summer 1985.Brenson, Michael. "Brooklyn Painters," ''The New York Times'', 1 June 1987.Heartney, Eleanor. "Working in Brooklyn, Brooklyn Museum," "Art News'', 1988. Eleanor Heartney, however, considered the architectural images less resistant to the seductions of the painting surfaces than earlier romantic imagery, as did Donald Kuspit, who felt the critique was vulnerable to absorption by the dominant culture. In his 1987 show, "The Party's Over," his imagery and presentation, if not his intent, became more polymorphous. In paintings and an installation, he mixed expressions of freedom, waste and excess—aerial views of freeways, liquor-ad-like splashes, corporate urbanism and celebrity—with violent overlays of bright, exaggerated Expressionist brushstrokes and paint blobs to self-critically reveal them as empty gestures of power and unmediated artistic angst, petrified into formula.Jones, Ronald, "Thomas Lawson: The Decay of Lying," ''Artscribe'', Number 62, March/April 1987, p. 43-7.Salvioni, Daniela. "Thomas Lawson," ''Flash Art'', May 1987.

Public Art (1987–1996)

In his 1986 ''Artforum'' essay, "Toward another Laocoön," Lawson signaled a practical and theoretical shift in his work and the broader art-world toward straightforward, confrontational public and political practices in the wake of Reaganism and the AIDS crisis: "These are difficult times for artists with the ambition of reformulating the cultural identity of the society. The idea of an avant-garde of any kind is clearly no longer useful… There is a need to rethink the purpose of art, its value in noncash terms."Lawson, Thomas. "Towards Another Laocoon, or, The Snake Pit," ''Artforum'', March, 1986. Over the next decade, he turned to a meta-critical dissection of public monuments and architecture and the values and processes of power inscribed within them.Robinson, Hilary. "Power and Position," ''Glasgow Herald'', 16 September 1990. His essay "Going Public" (1990) identifies the shift from privileged, private art gallery spaces to the more inclusive, interactive space of the city in the political, combative work of Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger and Group Material as part of a "widespread effort to recast art production as an activity of social meaning." Lawson deemed the move essential to avoiding the co-optation that rendered political art in galleries "nothing more than the ineffectual bleating of an elite whose job it is to show the human face of entrenched power."

Lawson’s own art extended beyond the canvas first to installationBrett, David. "New Installations," ''Circa'', November/December, 1989, p.43, 45.Morgan, Susan. "On the Wall of Derry," ''Arena Internacional Del Arte'', October, 1989. and then into public space with ''Civic Virtue/Civic Rights'' (1988), a temporary work in City Hall Park in New York.Brenson, Michael. "Group Show, City Hall Park," ''The New York Times'', 15 July 1988.Public Art Fund
Thomas Lawson: Civic Virtue / Civic Rights
Exhibitions. Retrieved 14 January 2018. It was the first of several public works that examined traditional public sculpture and its relationship to dominant power structures by translating such representations into other contexts.Decter, Joshua. "Thomas Lawson," ''Arts Magazine'', Summer, 1989.Tedeschi, Joan. "City Statues Come to the Municipal Building," ''Battery News'', 6 November 1989, p. 28–9. For the five-year commission, ''A Portrait of New York'' (1989), he covered a one-third mile length of scaffolding parapet during renovation of the city's Municipal Building with bright blue and orange, casually rendered imagery drawn from local civic statuary, redressing the short shrift given women and minorities in public sculpture by shuffling their images with those of monumentalized historical figures such as Alexander Hamilton, Nathan Hale and Al Smith.Mahoney, Robert. "New York in Review," ''Arts Magazine'', November 1990. In 1990, he created ''Memory Lingers Here'' for the First Tyne International Exhibition in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, a 30-billboard installation that enveloped a derelict soap factory.Blakey, Cliff. "Art out in the Open," ''I mag'',Issue 2, May, 1990, p. 22.Whetstone, David. "Gallery homes in festival garden," ''The Journal'', 4 May 1990. The work used imagery of St. George and the Dragon taken from a neglected, local war memorial in Old Eldon Square to comment on regional identity, memory, and the loss of place and social cohesion.Usherwood, Paul. "Viz(ual) Arts’ The First Tyne International, Edge '90, GGF," ''Art Monthly'' (London), July/August, 1990.Heartney, Eleanor. "Cultivating an Engaged Public Art," ''Art in America'', October, 1990, p. 53–7. Some of Lawson's other public art-related projects include billboards in New Haven, Connecticut (1988) and Bellgrove Station, Glasgow (1990),Bayless, D. Hayne. "Pair of painters bring art to the arterial," ''New Haven Register'', 25 December 1988. and ''Fallen Angels'' (1991), an installation based on local statuary imagery and created for the socially committed Circulo de Bellas Artes show, "El Sueño Imperative," in Madrid.Cantor, Judy. "El Sueno Imperativo," ''Art News'', May 1991, p. 164.Lawson, Thomas. "Angelic Visions," ''El Sueño Imperativo'', Madrid: Circulo de Bellas Artes 1991.

Return to painting (1995– )

Lawson returned to painting in the second half of the 1990s and has continued to engage the question of the medium's viability as an artist, educator, and writer.Braithewaite, Hunter
"Thomas Lawson with Hunter Braithwaite,"
''The Miami Rail'', 2016. Retrieved 14 January 2018.Schneider, Greg. "A conversation with Tom Lawson," ''Artweek'', 7 November 1991, p. 3, 24. In his own work, Lawson has extended his strategy of exploiting the contrast between the expectations of medium (painting) and message to explore concerns from geopolitics to self-representation on social media.Rosenberg, Karen. "Art in Review", ''The New York Times'', July 2009, p. C23.Korek, Bettina. "A Closer Look: Thomas Lawson Creates for the Met Opera," ''Style.com'', 17 March 2014. These later bodies of work are characterized by a greater use of juxtaposition, fragmentation and humor, and incorporate disparate painterly techniques, pictorial conventions and imagery in a sometimes dizzying mix that critics have described, variously, as ranging from "calm, collected and sinister"Frank, Peter. "Art Picks of the Week," ''L.A. Weekly'', 22–28 October 1999. to "visually disabling."Steadman, Ryan
"The Atomic Punk: Painter Thomas Lawson Can Still Stir Things Up,"
''Observer'', 12 October 2015. Retrieved 14 January 2018.

In his 1995 show, "Viennese Paintings," Lawson explored madness by juxtaposing stark, claustrophobic institutional rooms, disquieting images drawn from building facades, fountains and asylums in Vienna, and references to Freud and early modernism on diptychs rendered at topsy-turvy angles in brilliant colors.''The Times''. "Around the Galleries," Review, ''The Times'', 27 June 1995.Norwich Gallery. "Thomas Lawson, Viennese Paintings," Exhibition materials, 1995. His LAXART show, "History/Painting" (2007), probed geopolitical, environmental and economic instability through images of non-Western world maps and views of the globe, political leaders (e.g., ''Dogs of War'', 2006)David Kordansky Gallery
Thomas Lawson, Works
Artists. Retrieved January 14, 2018. and victims of beheadings from news and art history, painted with discordant colors and expressive techniques suggesting Max Beckmann, Emil Nolde or George Grosz.Berardini, Andrew
"Painting the Town,"
''Artforum'', 21 March 2007. Retrieved 14 January 2018. In shows between 2009 and 2015, works such as ''Confrontation: Three Graces'' (2010) edged closer to painting's decorative potential and investigated the allegorical possibilities of the human figure, questions of desire and attraction, and the pictorial rhetoric of self-representation.O’Neil-Butler, Lauren
"Thomas Lawson,"
''Artforum'', 7 September 2015. Retrieved 14 January 2018. ''Artforum''’s Travis Diehl described similar works, such as ''Theoretical Picture'' or ''Voluptuous Panic'' (both 2012),David Kordansky Gallery
Thomas Lawson, "In the Shadow of the Beast" exhibition
Artists. Retrieved January 14, 2018. as crossbreeding and suturing "huge chunks of culture" through jarring juxtapositions of painterly techniques, and "a weirdly savaged classicism" of truncated and silhouetted fragments from myths, statuary and contemporary media.Diehl, Travis. "Critic’s Picks: Thomas Lawson," ''Artforum.com'', 27 September 2012.Butler, Sharon

''Twocoatsofpaint.com'', 3 October 2012. Retrieved 14 January 2018. Reviewers described Lawson's 2015 show at Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery as uncanny work that defied categorization and encouraged viewers "to shed their biases and re-engage with wild beauty."

Writing

Lawson gained recognition for his early writing as "a master of the terse epigram" and a relentless, acerbic critic of the dominant authorities of the era; in 2001, ''Artforum'' editor Jack Bankowsky described it as "unusually vivid" frontline reporting. In later interviews, he has noted a shift in his thought away from the combative polemicism and world-historical framework of the 1980s, toward advocating work that is grounded in a specific culture or community without giving weight to any medium. Lawson's writing has appeared in journals including ''Artforum'', ''Art in America'', ''Flash Art'', ''frieze''Lawson, Thomas. "Interview with Douglas Gordon," ''frieze'', March–April, 1993. and ''October'' as well as in exhibition catalogues for artists including Sarah Charlesworth,Lawson, Thomas. "To Meet, To Talk, to Work Together: Sarah Charlesworth Seeks a new Way to Make Art,
''Sarah Charlesworth''
Rochelle Steiner (ed), Munich and London: DelMonico Books Prestel, 2017. Retrieved 14 January 2018. Liz Glynn,Lawson, Thomas. "Time Travel: New Work by Liz Glynn,
''Liz Glynn''
Catalogue, Claremont, CA: Pitzer College, 2012. Retrieved 14 January 2018. Gary Hume,Lawson, Thomas. "Gary Hume: Modern Painting," ''Gary Hume Door Painting'', Catalogue, Modern Art Oxford, 2008. Retrieved 14 January 2018. Laura OwensLawson, Thomas. "The Unbearable Lightness of Painting,
''Laura Owens''
Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art, 2001. Retrieved 14 January 2018. and Steven Prina,Lawson, Thomas. "Rhapsody in Pink: Steven Prina Paints,
''Steven Prina: As he Remembered It''
Vienna: Secession, Catalogue, 2011. Retrieved 14 January 2018. among many. Several of his essays, including "Last Exit: Painting"Wallis, Brian (ed). ''Art After Modernism'', New York and Boston: The New Museum and MIT Press, 1984.Hertz, Richard (ed). ''Theories of Contemporary Art'', New York: Prentice Hall, 1985. "Spies and Watchmen,"Wallis, Brian (ed). ''Blasted Allegories'', New York and Boston: The New Museum and MIT Press, 1987. and "The Future is Certain,"Singerman, Howard (ed). ''Individuals, A Selected History of Contemporary Art 1945-1986'', Los Angeles and New York: MOCA and Abbeville Press, 1986. have been anthologized extensively, and he co-edited the anthology, ''Modern Dreams: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Pop'' (1988).Alloway, Lawrence and Edward G. Leffingwell, Thomas Lawson, Patricia Phillips, Brian Wallis (eds)

Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1988. Retrieved 14 January 2018. ''Mining for Gold'' (JRP/Ringier, 2004), a collection of his writing, was listed among ''frieze'''s "Best Books 2005" and the writing noted for its role in critical discourses that have "informed successive generations of younger artists."Schumann, Max. "Books 2005," ''frieze'', 15 January 2006. Lawson also wrote a two-act play based on the sedition trial of the Scottish radical Thomas Muir, titled T''he Pest of Scotland, or, A Tocsin Sounds in Embro'' (2001).Lawson, Thomas
'' The Pest of Scotland, or, A Tocsin Sounds in Embro''
Centre Commissioning Artists in Place, 2001. Retrieved 14 January 2018. In 2015, he contributed to ''Akademie X: Lessons in Art + Life'', an anthology offering lessons, practical advice, ideological perspectives and assignments on contemporary art to students from artists across the globe.

Magazine editing

Lawson has edited contemporary art publications for over three decades. In 1978, he and Susan Morgan co-founded ''REALLIFE Magazine'', which they published and edited through twenty-three issues until 1992.Printed Matter
''REAL LIFE Magazine''
Retrieved 14 January 2018. ''REALLIFE'' featured written and visual material by and about young artists and served as a clearing house for new ideas and examinations of mass media and art, while chronicling New York’s developing postmodern alternative art scene;Lawson, Thomas, "An Interview with Fashion Moda," ''REAL LIFE Magazine'', #3, 1979. critic Carrie Rickey identified it as the "house organ" of the Pictures Generation. In addition to Lawson and Morgan, ''REALLIFE'' contributors included Eric Bogosian, Jennifer Bolande, Barbara Kruger, Félix Gonzáles-Torres, Kim Gordon, Craig Owens, Richard Prince, David Robbins, Laurie Simmons, and Lawrence Weiner, among many. In 2007, an anthology of the magazine's history, ''REALLIFE Magazine: Selected Writings and Projects, 1979–1994'', was published.
Between 2002 and 2009, Lawson co-edited the contemporary art journal ''Afterall'', which published as a joint venture of Central St Martins School of Art, London, and CalArts. In 2010, he founded the online art publication ''East of Borneo'' and has served as editor-in-chief since. ''East of Borneo'' focuses on contemporary art and its history as considered from Los Angeles and publishes essays and interviews alongside a multimedia archive of images, videos, texts, and sounds.

Academic career

Since being appointed in 1991, Lawson has served as Dean of the School of Art at California Institute for the Arts (CalArts) in Valencia, which is known for a conceptual, theory driven approach to art education dating back to its establishment at the heyday of the post-studio movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s.Lawson, Thomas. "CalArts," ''Flash Art'', July/August/September 2014, p. 67.Barden, Lane. "A conversation with Tom Lawson, dean, School of Art, CalArts" ''Artweek'', 6 May 1993, p. 16–7. In his writing and interviews, Lawson has stressed the importance of art school's having a "clear understanding of its own, historically driven account of what is important."Lawson, Thomas. "An Artist’s Education," ''CORE: Artists and Critics in Residence'', Joseph Havel (ed), Houston, TX: The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 2007 p. 79–97.Lawson, Thomas. "Art Schools: A Group Crit," ''Art in America'', May 2007 p. 104–5. He has emphasized CalArts’ founding intellectual tradition of contesting conventional ideas, questioning the means and ideology of representation, and teaching no medium in advance of ideas, while still rooting practice in the visual.Muchnic, Suzanne. "Art on the Move," ''Los Angeles Times'', 24 April 2005, p. 34. Thus, despite CalArts’ reputation as a place where painting has to justify itself, art writers note that Lawson has mentored a generation of established painters there, including Ingrid Calame, Laura Owens, and Monique Prieto; some of his other students include Andrea Bowers, Mark Bradford, Fiona Connor, Liz Glynn, and Kaari Upson.Berardini, Andrew. "After-School Drama The Current State of Painting in Los Angeles," ''LA Potential'', Vienna: Basis-Wien, 2009.Finkel, Jori. "Tales From the Crit: For Art Students, May Is the Cruelest Month," ''New York Times'', 30 April 2006, p. 34. Lawson has also sought to maintain the school’s ability to support new media through new facilities (the Edyth and Eli Broad Studios and the John Baldessari Stud Building), digital and ceramic labs, and faculty hires, such as Natalie Bookchin, Harry Dodge, Sam Durant, Harry Gamboa, Jr, Sharon Lockhart, Cauleen Smith, and Shirley Tse, among others. Prior to becoming Dean, Lawson was a Visiting Faculty member at CalArts in 1990 and 1987, an Instructor at the School of Visual Arts, New York (1981–90) and New York Studio Program (1987-89), and a Visiting Artist at Rhode Island School of Art and Design (1988–89 and 1983–84).

Awards and recognition

Lawson has received fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (2009), Lewis Walpole Library (2002),Lewis Walpole Library
Visiting Fellows and Travel Grant Recipients: 2002-2003
Retrieved 14 January 2018. Visual Art Projects, Glasgow (1999), and the National Endowment for the Arts (1989, 1985 1982); an Art Matters Foundation Grant (1986);Art Matters
Grantees from 1986
Grant Program. Retrieved 14 January 2018. residency awards from the Ucross Foundation, Wyoming (2003)Ucross Foundation
Visual Arts
Alumni List. Retrieved 14 January 2018. and Rockefeller Foundation, Bellagio Center (1997);Rockefeller Foundation
"Bellagio Study and Conference Center,"
''1997 Annual Report'', p. 59. Retrieved 14 January 2018. and funding for ''REAL LIFE Magazine'' from the NEA, Visual Artists Forums and NYSCA Visual Arts (1979–91).Carey, Brainard
"Non-Profit Spotlight: Artists Space,"
''Praxis'', 20 July 2017. Retrieved 14 January 2018.

References

External links

Thomas Lawson artist page, David Kordansky GalleryEast of Borneo, contemporary art magazineVideo Data Bank, "Tom Lawson: An Interview" with Kate Horsfield

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lawson, Thomas
1951 births
Living people
California Institute of the Arts faculty
20th-century Scottish painters
Scottish male painters
21st-century Scottish painters
21st-century Scottish male artists
British art critics
Artists from Glasgow
Artists from Los Angeles
20th-century Scottish male artists