Anna Lovatt
| Phone |
214-768-3843 |
Anna Lovatt’s research focuses on art of the 1960s onwards, particularly the role of drawing and diagramming in Conceptual Art, Land Art, Minimalism, and Video Art. Her current project Picturing Kinship: The Family in Contemporary Art explores artistic visualizations of kinship including Catherine Opie’s family portraits, Dennis Oppenheim’s collaborative videos and Donald Rodney’s multimedia installations. These artworks are analyzed in relation to changing popular conceptions of the family and the interdisciplinary discourse of critical kinship studies. A second project, developed as the inaugural Research Fellow at the Menil Drawing Institute in Houston, examines the productive encounters between drawing, television and video art during the “network era.” This project will culminate in the curated exhibition Lines of Resolution: Drawing and the Small Screen, opening at the Menil Drawing Institute in October 2025.
Lovatt is the author of Drawing Degree Zero: The Line from Minimal to Conceptual Art (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019). Her articles have been published in peer-reviewed journals including Art History, Art Journal, Grey Room, October and Word and Image. Curatorial projects include Bob Law: Ideas, Energies, Transmutations (Richard Saltoun Gallery, London, 2020) and Michelle Stuart: Drawn from Nature (Djanogly Art Gallery, University of Nottingham, UK; also traveled to the Parrish Art Museum, New York and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, California). The edited volume Michelle Stuart: Drawn from Nature (Hatje Cantz, 2013) accompanied this major survey of Stuart’s drawing practice.
Professor Lovatt welcomes applications from prospective Ph.D. students interested in experimental art of the 1960s onwards, contemporary approaches to drawing, feminist art and theory, or themes of kinship, collectivity, and care in contemporary art.
Education
B.A. History of Art with Material Studies, University College London
M.A. History of Art, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London
Ph.D. History of Art, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London
Recent Work
Books
Drawing Degree Zero: The Line from Minimal to Conceptual Art (Pennsylvania: Penn State University Press, 2019)
Michelle Stuart: Drawn from Nature (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2013). Edited by Anna Lovatt; essays by Alicia Longwell, Anna Lovatt, Jane McFadden and Nancy Princenthal; interview with Michelle Stuart by Julie Joyce.
Peer-reviewed Articles
“Paperwork: Conceptual Art and the Pink-Collar Worker,” Art Journal vol. 81, Summer 2022
“A Feedback Situation: Dennis Oppenheim’s Cybernetics of the Family,” Grey Room no. 80, Summer 2020
“An Underground Economy: The Collection of Ruth Vollmer (1903-1982),” Journal of the History of Collections, January 2020
“Janice Kerbel: Diagramming Desire” in Afterall, issue 37 (Autumn/Winter 2014)
“The Mechanics of Writing: Sol LeWitt, Stéphane Mallarmé and Roland Barthes,” Word and Image vol. 28 issue 4 (Winter 2012)
“Wavelength: Drawing and Sound in the Work of Trisha Donnelly,” Tate Papers 18 (Autumn 2012)
“Ideas in Transmission: LeWitt’s Wall Drawings and the Question of Medium,” Tate Papers 14 (Autumn 2010)
“On Ruth Vollmer and Minimalism’s Marginalia,” Art History vol. 33 issue 1 (Spring 2010)
“Dorothea Rockburne: Intersection,” October 122 (Fall 2007)
Recent Book Chapters and Catalogue Essays
“Making Selves: Materiality and Subjectivity in the Work of Dorothea Rockburne,” in Eva Diaz ed., Dorothea Rockburne (New York: Dia Art Foundation, 2024)
“Worlds Made and Unmade,” in Juliette Kennedy ed., Fred Sandback at the University of Helsinki, (Helsinki: University of Helsinki, 2024)
“A Passion to Describe,” in Moritz Wesseler ed., Toba Khedoori, (Kassel: Museum Fridericianum, 2024)
“Only Connect: Art, Feminism and Ecology in the 1980s,” in Leigh Arnold ed., Groundswell: Women of Land Art (Dallas: Nasher Sculpture Center, 2023)
“Sculpture on the Brink,” in Emily Wei Rales ed., Charles Ray, Volume III (Potomac, Maryland: Glenstone, 2023)
“Merely Human: Blythe Bohnen’s Graphic Gestures” in Blythe Bohnen: Being There and Not Being There (Wellesley, Massachusetts: David Hall Fine Art, 2023)
“On Her Fingers and Toes” in Fiona Bradley ed., Howardena Pindell: A New Language (Edinburgh: Fruitmarket Gallery, 2022)
“Bochner’s Labyrinths,” in Kevin Salatino ed., Mel Bochner: Drawing (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2022)
“Making Space,” in Flavin Judd ed., Donald Judd: Artworks 1970-1994 (New York: David Zwirner Books, 2022)
“Drawing as Worldmaking” in Vitamin D3: New Perspectives in Drawing (London: Phaidon, 2021)
“LeWitt’s Malfunctioning Machines” in David Areford ed., Locating LeWitt: Between the Mind and the Body (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2021)
“Radical Antinomies: Drawing and Conceptual Art” in A Companion to Contemporary Drawing (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2020)
“Against Deculturation: Ana Mendieta in Cuba” in Ana Mendieta: La tierra habla (The Earth Speaks), (New York: Galerie Lelong, 2019)
Distinctions
National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend, Summer 2024
Menil Drawing Institute Research Fellowship, Spring 2022
Terra Foundation for American Art Travel Grant, Spring 2010
Terra Foundation for American Art Conference Grant, 2008
Henry Moore Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2006-07
Course list
| From the Baroque to the Digital Age: Art and People of the Modern World | ARHS 1302 |
| Art of the Selfie: Self-Portraiture from the Renaissance to the Present | ARHS 1375 |
| Gender and Sexuality in Modern and Contemporary Art | ARHS 3381 |
| History of Photography II: 1940 to the Present | ARHS 3380 |
| Picturing Children and the Family in Art, 1850 to the Present | ARHS 3387 |
| Undergraduate Seminar on Contemporary Art: Performance Art | ARHS 4349 |
| Graduate Seminar on Contemporary Art: Kinship, Collectivity, and Care | ARHS 6351 |
