Kozloff, Max 1933-

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KOZLOFF, Max 1933-

PERSONAL: Born June 21, 1933, in Chicago, IL; married Joyce Blumberg (an artist), July 2, 1967; children: Nikolas. Education: University of Chicago, B.A., 1953, M.A., 1958; attended New York University Institute of Fine Arts, 1959-64.

ADDRESSES: Home—152 Wooster St., New York, NY 10012.

CAREER: College and university art school instructor, 1959—. Visiting member of faculty at California Institute of the Arts, Yale University, University of New Mexico, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, New York University, Cooper Union, Philadelphia College of Art, University of California—San Diego, and University of California—Los Angeles. Photographs exhibited in New York City at Holly Solomon and Marlborough Galleries, and in numerous one-man and group shows. Military service: U.S. Army, 1954-56.

MEMBER: PEN, Society for Photographic Education.

AWARDS, HONORS: Fulbright scholar, 1962-63; Pulitzer Prize for critical writing, 1962-63; Frank Jewett Mather Award for art criticism from College Art Association of America, 1965; Ingram-Merril Foundation Award, 1965; Guggenheim fellow, 1968-69; National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, 1973, 1984-85; Reva and Dave Logan Grant for new writing on photography, 1983.

WRITINGS:

(Editor) Artists and Writers Protest against the War in Vietnam: Anthology of Eighteen Authors, Phoenix Book Shop, 1967.

Jasper Johns, Abrams (New York, NY), 1968.

Renderings: Critical Essays on a Century of Modern Art, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1969.

Cubism/Futurism, Charterhouse (New York, NY), 1973.

Photography and Fascination: Essays, Addison House (Danbury, NH), 1979.

The Privileged Eye: Essays on Photography, University of New Mexico Press (Albuquerque, NM), 1987.

Duane Michals: Now Becoming Then, Twin Palms Publishers (Altadena, CA), 1991.

Lone Visions, Crowded Frames: Essays on Photography, University of New Mexico Press (Albuquerque, NM), 1994.

Cultivated Impasses: Essays on the Waning of the Avant-Garde, 1964-1975, Marsilio (New York, NY), 2000.

New York: Capital of Photography, Jewish Museum (New York, NY), 2002.

(Editor) New Yorkers as Seen by Magnum Photographers, powerHouse Books (New York, NY), 2003.

Art critic for Nation, 1961-69; New York correspondent for Art International, 1962-64. Artforum, contributing editor, 1963-74, executive editor, 1974-76.

Contributor to volumes such as Western Man: Photographs from the National Western Stock Show, Johnson Publishing Co. (Boulder, CO), 1980; The Restless Decade: John Gutmann's Photographs of the Thirties, Abrams (New York, NY), 1984; Cuba, a View from the Inside, Center for Cuban Studies (New York, NY), 1985; Vanishing Presence, Rizzoli (New York, NY), 1989; Leon Levinstein: The Moment of Exposure, by Bob Shamis, National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa, Canada), 1995; and The Social Scene: The Ralph M. Parsons Foundation Photography Collection at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles, CA), 2000.

SIDELIGHTS: A Pulitzer Prize–winning art critic for the Nation from 1961 to 1969, Max Kozloff has written books on art as well as photography. Deeming him to be "surely the most 'writerly' of all current art critics," New Republic reviewer Stephen Koch praised Kozloff as a writer who "uses language with a real gift." His text in the 1986 work Jasper Johns "carries the reader through the experience of looking and thinking about what's been seen with an urgent intelligence that can be exciting in itself," the critic added. In Photography and Fascination, Kozloff discusses the nature of photography in general, according to Peter Conrad of the Times Literary Supplement, by explaining how the best photographs show "the medium's control over reality by obscuring or inverting objects, [and by] mocking the fallibility of the human eye." Similarly, in The Privileged Eye: Essays on Photography, Kozloff "touches nerves and uncovers insights concerning the main channel of visual communication (and some say art) of the twentieth century," wrote David Baker in School Arts.

A practicing "street photographer," as well as a critic of the form, Kozloff in his own work captures the seemingly abstract, chaotic, deceptively un-staged subject matter and composition that characterizes urban street photography. "In these images, glimpses of concrete specificity launch us as viewers into a vertiginous zone of ambiguity," wrote Martin Patrick in Afterimage. Patrick added, "Photographic details, however, sharply rendered, become mysterious clues to something just always out of reach. Kozloff recognizes that to lurk near the edge of chaos without succumbing to it can be an altogether pleasant sensation." As both photographer and critic, Kozloff "repeatedly recognizes that it is just at the moment when a photograph verges on complete incoherence that its ability to provoke thought and convey beauty is much more profound in its implications," Patrick observed.

In New York: Capital of Photography, Kozloff explores the idea that "street photography in New York has been an essentially Jewish art form," wrote Jake Miller in the New York Times Book Review. The city of New York "we know through photographs is an 'American city visualized by Jews,'" Kozloff states in the book. Both New York: Capital of Photography and the historical retrospective exhibit mounted by Kozloff at New York's Jewish Museum in 2002 sought to "define a Jewish aesthetic" in street photography, remarked Daniel Belasco in New York Jewish Week. Kozloff identifies "a unique 'social tension'" in the work of Jewish photographers "which is usually not found in the work of their non-Jewish colleagues," commented Richard B. Woodward in the New York Times. Added Woodward, "Wrestling with issues of cultural assimilation, Jewish photographers devoured New York with their cameras while at the same [time] registering a sense that they stood apart." The majority of "Jewish photographers move through territory they can't quite say they've claimed," Belasco quoted Kozloff as saying during an interview at the show's press opening. "For them, everyone is displaced in America, at least in the teeming streets of New York."

Kozloff recognized the provocative and controversial nature of his claim, and some critics heartily disagreed with his thesis. "The answers he proposes rely on some dubious aesthetic notions," Woodward remarked. "He suggests, for example, that photographs of New York taken by Jews show a sensibility distinct from those by non-Jews. It's not clear who will feel more insulted by some of his ideas: Jewish photographers who have never regarded themselves as such, or non-Jewish photographers who, in Mr. Kozloff's opinion, have usually evidenced in their work a more stable and also a less soulful vision of the city." Robert Leiter, writing in Jewish Exponent, offered a caution: "If you decide to buy the book or go see the show, do so for the excitement, beauty, and emotionalism of these images—and check all those grand theories at the front door." Despite the criticism of Kozloff's approach, reviewers such as Joanna Lehan in Photo District News remarked that "Kozloff offers original scholarship and provocative ideas," and concluded that "the idea is slippery but fascinating to explore." David Bryant, writing in Library Journal, called New York: Capital of Photography a "well-designed and often surprising book."

"Photography allows me to 'know' something that painting can never verify," Kozloff said in an interview with Vicki Goldberg in Art Journal. "But just the same, I love photography's trickiness—which it can't help, or rather, our uncertain perception of it—which we can't help." "To read Kozloff's work is to discover many things," Patrick remarked, "and perhaps most significantly to be reminded that both aesthetics and politics can be engaged simultaneously within serious criticism of photography, and with great subtlety and sensitivity to language."

Kozloff told CA: "After fifteen years as a professional art critic, editor, and teacher, I switched in 1976 to the study of photography. Additionally, I became a practicing photographer, showing my color work in art galleries. This change was motivated by the great psychological and political resonance of photographic culture. After a prolonged involvement with the theme of the store window, I swiveled around to observe the street life that had been reflected by the glass. This ambulatory, intensely urban phase continues, often in an elegiac mood. I also do portraiture. I think of the writing I'm doing now, on the criticism and theory of portraiture, as a kind of carpet upon which emerge the figures of my actual portraits."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Kozloff, Max, New York: Capital of Photography, Jewish Museum (New York, NY), 2002.

PERIODICALS

Afterimage, winter, 2002, Martin Patrick, "'Vaguely Stealthy Creatures:' Max Kozloff on the Poetics of Street Photography," pp. 6-7.

Artforum International, December, 2000, Robert Storr, review of Cultivated Impasses: Essays on the Waning of the Avant-Garde, 1964-1975, p. 34; January, 2002, David Levi Strauss, review of New York, p. 43; May, 2003, Jennifer Liese, "Revisiting Max Kozloff's essay 'American Painting during the Cold War,'" p. 42.

Art in America, June, 2000, review of Cultivated Impasses: Essays on the Waning of the Avant-Garde, 1964-1975, p. 33.

Art Journal, fall, 2000, Vicki Goldberg, "An Interview with Joyce and Max Kozloff," p. 96.

Jewish Exponent, July 25, 2002, Robert Leiter, "The Shutters of New York," review of New York, p. 30.

Library Journal, August, 2002, David Bryant, review of New York, pp. 84-85; December, 2003, Sheila Devaney, review of New Yorkers as Seen by Magnum Photographers, p. 110.

New Republic, October 10, 1970.

New York Jewish Week, May 3, 2002, Daniel Belasco, "Lens of the City: A Preponderance of Jews Dominates Jewish Museum's Photographic Tribute to New York," review of New York, p. 59.

New York Times, July 7, 2002, Richard B. Woodward, "Behind a Century of Photos, Was There a Jewish Eye?," review of New York, section 2, p. 1.

New York Times Book Review, July 7, 2002, Jake Miller, "New York Defined, Perhaps," review of New York, p. 14.

Photo District News, August, 2002, Joanna Lehan, review of New York, pp. 94-95.

Publishers Weekly, October 20, 2003, review of New Yorkers as Seen by Magnum Photographers, p. 51.

School Arts, December, 1989, David Baker, review of The Privileged Eye: Essays on Photography, p. 43. Times Literary Supplement, November 14, 1980.