What would an art history of ageing ‘look like’, beyond simply exploring images of the aged body, or elegiac notions of ‘late style’? How, for instance, does the problem of ‘ageing’ figure in works of art that are abstract, or which do not take age as their recognisable ‘subject matter’? Of course, everything ages: bodies, artworks, ideas, politics, and materials. Yet at certain historical moments, these issues have come into focus in new and especially charged ways. In 1960s America ageing became a feminist issue. Despite its status as a decade typically defined by youthful revolution, this was also a time when questions of ageing and generational difference came to the fore, as the notion of ‘ageing successfully’ or ‘well’ was touted widely as a guiding moral and social imperative. In contrast, this lecture will look at work by women artists who instead elected to age badly, or who for various reasons found themselves doing so.
Jo Applin, Walter H. Annenberg Professor in the History of Art
Jo Applin is a specialist in modern and contemporary art, with a particular emphasis on American and British art since 1945. She studied at the University of Essex and at UCL, where she was subsequently Henry Moore Postdoctoral Fellow. She joined The Courtauld in 2016, after eleven years teaching at the University of York. From 2018 to 2021 she was Head of the History of Art Department at The Courtauld. Jo is currently an Elected Member of the Courtauld’s Governing Board and Director of the Centre for American Art.
In 2008 Jo was Associate Scholar at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal, and in 2012 she was the recipient of a Philip Leverhulme Prize. In 2016 she was Visiting Scholar at the University of Cambridge Centre for Gender Studies, a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, and Senior Scholar at the Terra Foundation Summer Residency in Giverny. In spring 2022 she was invited professor at Université Paris 1, Panthéon-Sorbonne.
Jo’s research addresses questions of abstraction, feminism, sexuality, and subjectivity. She is the author of Lee Lozano: Not Working (Yale University Press, 2018), Alison Wilding (Lund Humphries, 2018), Eccentric Objects: Rethinking Sculpture in 1960s America (Yale University Press, 2012), and Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirror Room-Phalli’s Field (Afterall and MIT Press, 2012). Her most recent book, Lee Lozano: Not Working, was awarded the Suzanne and James Mellor Book Prize from the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington D.C. She is currently working on a book about art and ageing.
Jo’s edited books include London Art Worlds: Mobile, Contingent and Ephemeral Networks 1960-1980 (Penn State University Press, 2018), with Catherine Spencer and Amy Tobin, and Flesh (York Museums Trust, 2016). She has also co-edited special issues of Oxford Art Journal, Tate Papers, and Art Journal. In 2016 Jo co-curated Flesh, a major loan exhibition of over eighty works at York Art Gallery. Artists included Francis Bacon, Lynda Benglis, Belinda de Bruyckere, Chardin, Sarah Lucas, Steve McQueen, Bruce Nauman, Rodin, Donald Rodney, Rubens, and Jenny Saville.
Jo has also published widely on contemporary art and is an active critic. She has written reviews for scholarly journals including Oxford Art Journal, The Art Book, Journal of American Studies, Map, Sculpture Journal, West 86th, and Modernism/Modernity. She has also written for Artforum,ArtReview, Times Literary Supplement, and the London Review of Books.
Jo is an editor of Oxford Art Journal, where from 2014 to 2020 she was reviews editor. She also sits on the editorial boards of Archives of American Art Journal and Tate Papers. She previously served on the Advisory Board of the Terra-Tate Research Project ‘Refiguring American Art 1945-1980’ and ARTMargins. Jo is a Trustee of the Eva Hesse Charitable Foundation and is a member of the Advisory Council of the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.