Anna Lovatt

Art History

Associate Professor
Director of Graduate Studies

Email

annalovatt@smu.edu

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 on visualizations of kinship in contemporary art explores the role of new technologies in representing family relationships since the 1970s, beginning with video works by artists including Shigeko Kubota, Dennis Oppenheim, and Ulrike Rosenbach. 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 in art of the Cold War era.

Professor 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.

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)

Selected Book Chapters and Catalogue Essays

“On the Brink,” in Emily Wei Rales ed., Charles Ray, Volume III (Potomac, Maryland: Glenstone, 2022)

“A Passion to Describe,” in Moritz Wesseler ed., Toba Khedoori (Kassel: Museum Fridericianum, 2022)

“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) 

“Merely Human: Blythe Bohnen’s Graphic Gestures” in Blythe Bohnen (Wellesley, Massachusetts: David Hall Fine Art, in press, 2021)

“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)

“From Boiling Water to Drawing: Castoro’s Inventories” in Rosemarie Castoro (Barcelona: Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, 2017)

“Time Waits for No Line: An Interview with Robin Rhode” in Sarah Burkhalter and Lawrence Schmidlin, Spacescapes: Dance and Drawing Since 1962 (Zurich: JRP Ringier, 2017)

“Exit the Self” in Simon Hantaï (London: Timothy Taylor Gallery, 2016)

“Turning” in Anne Truitt in Japan (New York: Matthew Marks Gallery, 2015)

“In Pursuit of the Neutral: Agnes Martin’s Shimmering Line” in Agnes Martin (London: Tate Publishing, 2015)

“Drawing, Withdrawing: Forms of Abstraction” in Richard Deacon ed., Abstract Drawing (London: Ridinghouse, 2014)

“Rosalind Krauss’s ‘The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths,’ 1985” in Shone, Richard and Stonard, John-Paul eds., The Books That Shaped Art History: From Gombrich and Greenberg to Alpers and Krauss (London: Thames and Hudson, 2012)

“For an Adversarial LeWitt” in Baume, Nicholas ed., Sol LeWitt: Structures (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2011)

Distinctions

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
Anna Lovatt