CAA News Today

In its regular roundup of obituaries, CAA recognizes the lives and achievements of the following artists, historians, curators, educators, and others whose work has significantly influenced the visual arts. Notable deaths this summer and fall include the artists Stephen Antonakos and Mark Gottsegen and the Renaissance art historian Mark Zucker.

• Stephen Antonakos, an artist known for abstract sculpture that incorporates neon lighting, died on August 17, 2013, at age 86
• Jack Beal, an American painter of nudes, still lifes, and murals whose representational aesthetic ushered in the New Realism of the 1960s and 1970s, died on August 29, 2013, at the age of 82
• John Bellany, a Scottish figurative painter whose retrospective was held last year at the Scottish National Gallery, passed away on August 28, 2013. He was 71
• Marion Bloch, an art collector and philanthropist, died on September 24, 2013, at age 83. The wife of the founder of H&R Block, she was a longtime supporter of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City
• Michael K. Brown, a longtime curator of the Bayou Bend Collection, part of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, passed away on September 8, 2013. He was 60 years old
• Red Burns, an arts professor and chair of the Interactive Telecommunications Program in the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, died on August 23, 2013. Known as the “godmother of Silicon Alley,” she was 88 years old
• Anne Christopherson, an English painter renowned for her depictions of the Thames River, died on August 15, 2013. She was 91
• Alvin Eisenman, the founding director of Yale University’s graduate program in graphic design, died on September 3, 2013. He was 92
• Cecil Fergerson, a former curator for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and a community activist, died on September 18, 2013, at age 82. Fergeson started working for the museum in 1948 as a janitor and became a preparator before joining the curatorial staff
• Juan Garcia de Oteyza, an editor, publisher, and diplomat who served as director of Aperture Foundation from 2008 to 2010, died on August 26, 2013. He was 51
• Mark Gottsegen, a painter and the founder of Art Materials Information and Education Network (AMIEN), passed away on September 24, 2013. He had been a professor at the University of North Carolina in Greenboro and was the author of The Painter’s Handbook
• Alfred Rozelaar Green, a painter who spent the 1930s in Paris and who later founded the Anglo-French Art Centre in London, has died. He was 95 years old
• Ellen Lanyon, a painter and printmaker based in New York whose work has been described as a “unique blend of realism and the surreal,” died on October 7, 2013. She was 86
• Frank Martinez, an artist and muralist based in Los Angeles, died on August 17, 2013. He was 89
• Michael McManus, former chief curator of the Laguna Art Museum in California, died on August 10, 2013, at age 60. He had taught at California State University, Fullerton, and the Laguna College of Art and Design
• Mario Montez, a drag performer and film actor who was part of Andy Warhol’s entourage of superstars, died on September 26, 2013. He was 78
• Steve Ross, a literary scholar and the director of the Office of Challenge Grants at the National Endowment for the Humanities from 1995 to 2013, died on August 21, 2013. He was 70
• Sadegh Tirafkan, an Iranian artist who blended photography and other artistic media in innovative ways, passed away on May 9, 2013. He was 47
• Arturo Vega, a Mexican artist who designed graphics for the Ramones, including the band’s famous circular logo, died on June 7, 2013. He was 65 years old
• Gillian Wakely, associate director of education for the University of Pennsylvania Museum, died on August 14, 2013, age 67. She had worked for her institution for forty years
• Kathleen Watkins, an English curator and secretary of the Penwith Society of Arts in St. Ives, Cornwall, for forty-six years, died on September 5, 2013. She was 80 years old
• George Weissbort, a traditional painter of portraits, landscapes, and still lifes who was based in London for decades, died on July 9, 2013. He was age 85
• John Wright, a British artist of many talents—he was a painter, professor, writer, designer, and filmmaker—died on July 9, 2013. He was 82 years old
• Mark Zucker, a Renaissance art historian and a professor in the College of Art and Design at Louisiana State University for thirty-two years, died on August 3, 2013. He was 69

Read all past obituaries in the arts in CAA News, which include special texts written for CAA. Please send links to published obituaries, or your completed texts, to Christopher Howard, CAA managing editor, for the next list.

In its regular roundup of obituaries, CAA recognizes the lives and achievements of the following artists, historians, educators, and others whose work has significantly influenced the visual arts. Notable deaths this summer include four major internationally known artists: Ruth Asawa, Walter De Maria, León Ferrari, and Allan Sekula. In addition, CAA has published special obituaries on the Asian American art historian Sadayoshi “Sada” Omoto and the eminent Russian scholar Dmitrii V. Sarabianov.

• Ruth Asawa, an artist based in San Francisco who created abstract sculpture, including intricate hanging wire pieces and several public fountains, passed away on August 6, 2013. She was 87 years old
• Ronnie Cutrone, an artist and an assistant to Andy Warhol in the Factory from 1972 into the early 1980s, died on July 21, 2013. He was 65
• Walter De Maria, a sculptor best known for his large-scale outdoor work The Lightning Field and indoor pieces such as The New York Earth Room and The Broken Kilometer, died on July 25, 2013. He was 77 years old
• León Ferrari, an Argentine artist known for provocative work that addressed war, religion, power, and sex, died on July 25, 2013. He was 92 years old
• Betty Jones, a conservator of paintings at Harvard University’s Fogg Museum and for the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, died on May 20, 2013, at age 94. She was instrumental in recovery efforts in Venice after the city was flooded in 1966
• Ben Lifson, a writer, curator, and photographer, passed away on July 3, 2013, at the age of 72. Lifson served as photography critic for the Village Voice from 1977 to 1982
• Larry Nowlan, a realist sculptor based in New Hampshire known for his bronze statue of the actor Jackie Gleason as Ralph Kramden, sited outside New York’s Port Authority, died on July 30, 2013. He was 48 years old
• Sadayoshi “Sada” Omoto, a historian of American and Asian art who taught at Michigan State University for thirty-three years, died on March 4, 2013, at the age of 90. A special obituary on the scholar has been published by CAA
• John Reilly, the founder of a New York theater for underground video called the Global Village, died on July 28, 2013, age 74. Reilly financed documentary films and created his own, including Waiting for Beckett (1993), while also teaching workshops on video production
• Alejandro Santiago, a Mexican artist who worked on a series of small statues called 2501 Migrantes from 2002 to 2008, passed away on July 22, 2013. He was 49 years old
• Dmitrii V. Sarabianov, a Russian scholar who specialized in art of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, passed away on July 19, 2013, age 89. CAA has published a special obituary on the eminent art historian
• Allan Sekula, an artist, photographer, writer, and longtime professor at California Institute of the Arts, died on August 10, 2013. He was 62 years old. Last year CAA honored Sekula with its Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award for Writing on Art
• Jud Yalkut, a film and video artist based in Dayton, Ohio, died on July 23, 2013, at the age of 75. He founded the film and video program at Wright State University in 1973 and also taught at Sinclair Community College and Xavier University

Read all past obituaries in the arts in CAA News, which include special texts written for CAA. Please send links to published obituaries, or your completed texts, to Christopher Howard, CAA managing editor, for the next list.

In its regular roundup of obituaries, CAA recognizes the lives and achievements of the following artists, photographers, scholars, architects, educators, museum directors, and others whose work has significantly influenced the visual arts. Notable deaths this summer include the artist Sarah Charlesworth and the former Museum of Modern Art director John Hightower. In addition, CAA has published a special obituary on Jens T. Wollesen, a historian of the art of medieval Italy and Cyprus who taught at the University of Toronto for many years.

• Gabriele Basilico, a prominent Italian photographer of architecture and urban landscapes, died on February 13, 2013. He was 68
• George Paul Horse Capture Sr., former deputy assistant director for cultural resources at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian and later senior counselor to its director, died on April 16, 2013. Also known as Nay Gyagya Nee (Spotted Otter), he was 75 years old
• Sarah Charlesworth, an artist and photographer associated with the Pictures Generation, died on June 25, 2013, at the age of 66
• Alex Colville, a celebrated Canadian painter who depicted realistic scenes of everyday life, passed away on July 16, 2013. He was 92 year old
• Martha Mayer Erlebacher, a figurative artist and longtime professor at the New York Academy of Art, died on June 22, 2013. She was 75
• Paul Feiler, an Anglo-German painter of lyrical abstraction, died on July 8, 2013, at age 95. He had taught for many years at the West of England College of Art (now Royal West of England Academy) in Bristol
• Mark Fisher, a set designer for the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, and U2 who trained as an architect, died on June 25, 2013. He was 66
• John Hightower, director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York from 1970 to 1971, died on July 6, 2013. Hightower also led the New York State Council of the Arts from 1964 to 1970 and later served as director of the Mariner’s Museum in Newport News, Virginia, for thirteen years
• Elspeth kydd, a filmmaker, author, and scholar, passed away on April 9, 2013, at the age of 46. She had taught at the University of Toledo, the University of the West of England, and the University of the West Indies
• Henning Larsen, an award-winning architect who designed the Copenhagen Business School Dalgas Have and the Royal Danish Opera, died on June 22, 2013. He was 87 years old
• Virginia Pitts Rembert Liles, a professor of art history who served as chair of the Art Department at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, died on July 5, 2013. The fall 2012 issue of the Loupe published a profile on Liles’s long, distinguished career
• Cynthia Moody, a British filmmaker and editor of documentaries and advertisements, died in summer 2013, at the age of 89. Moody was also the caretaker of the estate of her Jamaican-born uncle, the sculptor Ronald Moody
• Norman Parish, an artist and art dealer whose gallery in Washington, DC, showed the work of African American artists, died on July 8, 2013. He was 75
• Gwyn Hanssen Pigott, an Australian-born ceramicist whose work was known internationally, passed away on July 5, 2013, age 78. The National Gallery of Victoria held a major retrospective of her pottery in 2006
• Alejandro Puente, an Argentinian artist who participated in the avant-garde scene at the Instituto Di Tella in Buenos Aires, has died. Born in 1933, Puente was also associated with the geometría sensible movement
• Monica Ross, a performance artist, feminist, and professor at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, died on June 14, 2013. She was 63 years old
• William Z. Slany, chief historian of the US Department of State whose work helped to recover Jewish property looted by the Nazis, died on May 13, 2013. He was 84
• Jeffrey Smart, an Australian painter based in Italy who was known for his postindustrial urban landscapes, died on June 20, 2013. He was 91 years old
• Bert Stern, a commercial photographer and documentary filmmaker best known for his portraits of Marilyn Monroe taken six weeks before her death, passed away on June 26, 2013. He was 83
• William Turner, an English artist who was a leading member of the Northern School of Lancashire painters, died on July 10, 2013, at the age of 93
• Jens T. Wollesen, a historian of medieval art who was a longtime professor in the Department of Art at the University of Toronto, died on April 22, 2013. Born in 1947, Wollesen had recently completed a book, Acre or Cyprus: A New Approach to Crusader Painting around 1300. CAA has published a special obituary on the late professor
• Walter Zanini, a Brazilian professor of philosophy and the founder of the Brazilian Committee of History of Art, died on January 29, 2013. Born in 1925, Zanini served as director of the Museum of Contemporary Art at the University of São Paulo from 1963 to 1978

Read all past obituaries in the arts in CAA News, which include special texts written for CAA. Please send links to published obituaries, or your completed texts, to Christopher Howard, CAA managing editor, for the next list.

In its regular roundup of obituaries, CAA recognizes the lives and achievements of the following artists, designers, scholars, professors, museum directors, and others whose work has significantly influenced the visual arts. Notable deaths this month include the former Guggenheim Museum director Thomas M. Messer and a dealer, curator, and publisher of Conceptual art, Seth Siegelaub.

• Cerna “Chickie” Alter, a corporate art consultant who established her Chicago-area business in the 1960s, died on May 10, 2013. She was 74
• Ralph Brown, a British sculptor of figurative works in clay, plaster, metal, and marble, died on April 3, 2013, at age 84
• Anne Bryan, an artist and a student of painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, died on June 5, 2013. She was 24 years old
• William T. Cartwright, a documentary filmmaker and producer who bought and preserved the Watts Towers in Los Angeles, died on June 1, 2013. He was 92
• Roberto Chabet, a curator and the founding director of the Cultural Center of the Philippines who taught for more than thirty years in the College of Fine Arts at the University of the Philippines, died on April 30, 2013. Known as the father of conceptual art in his country, he was 76 years old
• Niels Diffrient, an industrial designer who worked on the Princess telephone, John Deere tractor seats, the Polaroid SX-70 camera, and American Airlines jet interiors, died on June 8, 2013, at age 84
• Bruce Evans, a curator and museum director who worked at the Dayton Art Institute from 1965 to 1991, died on May 14, 2013, at 72. He also led the Mint Museum of Art in Charlotte, North Carolina, and served as president of the Association of Art Museum Directors
• Dawn Glanz, a historian of American and European art who taught in the School of Art at Bowling Green State University for twenty-five years, passed away on May 9, 2013. She was 66
• Michael Harrison, head of fine art at Winchester School of Art and director of Kettle’s Yard, a contemporary-art center in Cambridge, England, from 1992 to 2011, died on April 25, 2013. He was 65
• Ray Harryhausen, an influential stop-motion animator for films such as Mighty Joe Young (1949), Jason and the Argonauts (1963), One Million Years BC (1966), and Clash of the Titans (1981), passed away on May 7, 2013. He was 92
• Jimmy Jalapeeno, a painter and photographer based in Texas who earned two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, died on May 22, 2013. He was 66 years old
• Farideh Lashai, an Iranian painter of gestural abstractions and the author of a compelling autobiographical novel called Shal Bamu (2003), died on February 24, 2013, at age 68
• Lee Littlefield, a Houston-based artist known for his “Pop-Up” sculptural works alongside Interstate 10 in Texas, died on June 9, 2013. He was 77 years old
• Mollie Lyman, a professor of art who taught in the Art Department at Emory University for over thirty years as well as at the Atlanta College of Art, passed away on April 13, 2013. She was 87
• Kim Merker, a designer, typesetter, and printer of hand-pressed books of poetry, died on April 28, 2013, at age 81. He founded Stone Wall Press in 1957 and the Windhover Press at the University of Iowa ten years later
• Thomas M. Messer, a director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum from 1961 to 1988 who oversaw the acquisition of the Thannhauser Collection and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, died on May 15, 2013, at the age of 93
• Wayne F. Miller, a photographer who documented the Second World War for the US Navy and captured the experiences of black residents living on the South Side of Chicago, died on May 22, 2013. He was 94
• Otto Muehl, a controversial Austrian artist, died on May 26, 2013, at age 87. With several others, Muehl founded Viennese Actionism in the early 1960s
• Angela Paterakis, a professor of art education at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for nearly fifty years, died on May 19, 2013. She was 80 years old
• William Plunkett, a British designer and manufacturer of modern furniture, died on May 5, 2013. He was 84
• Richard Rousseau, the founder and owner of Artist Hardware, a design and development firm, and a former product manager at Blick Art Materials, passed away on May 31, 2013. He was 46 years old
• Dale R. Roylance, a curator at Princeton University who organized more than one hundred exhibitions in the Harvey S. Firestone Memorial Library, died on May 19, 2013, age 88. Roylance also served as curator of the arts of the book at Yale University’s Sterling Memorial Library
• Betty Rogers Rubenstein, an art historian and a former art critic for the Tallahassee Democrat, passed away on May 19, 2013. She was 92
• Elizabeth Foster Schoyer, a former member of the Women’s Committee at the Carnegie Museum of Art and a longtime museum docent, died on June 10, 2013. She was 94
• Seth Siegelaub, an adventurous dealer of Conceptual art, a producer and publisher of artists’ projects, and an expert in textiles, died on June 15, 2013, at the age of 71
• Vollis Simpson, a self-taught artist based in North Carolina who created large sculptural works called whirligigs with materials from junkyards, passed away on May 31, 2013. He was 94
• Willi Sitte, an East German artist who worked in a Social Realist style, died on June 8, 2013, at age 92. Sitte served as president of his former country’s association of visual artists from 1974 to 1988
• Dorothea Wight, an artist, printmaker, and teacher who operated Studio Prints, an intaglio workshop in London, died on May 23, 2013. She was 68

Read all past obituaries in the arts in CAA News, which include special texts written for CAA. Please send links to published obituaries, or your completed texts, to Christopher Howard, CAA managing editor, for the next list.

In its regular roundup of obituaries, CAA recognizes the lives and achievements of the following artists, scholars, architects, photographers, filmmakers, publishers, and others whose work has significantly influenced the visual arts.

• Les Blank, a documentary filmmaker whose Burden of Dreams (1982) chronicled the making of Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo, died on April 7, 2013. He was 77 years old. Blank also directed films on the musicians Lightning Hopkins, Dizzy Gillespie, and Clifton Chenier
• Ellen Cantor, an artist and filmmaker known for her ongoing work Pinochet Porn, passed away on April 21, 2013. She was 51 years old
• Bernard Cheese, a British painter, printmaker, and educator, died on March 15, 2013, at the age of 88. Cheese taught at Saint Martins School of Art (1950–68), Goldsmiths College (1970–78), and Central School of Art and Design, London (1980–89)
• Les Coleman, a London-based artist, writer of aphorisms, and “all-around rare bird,” died on January 17, 2013. He was 67
• Edward de Grazia, an American lawyer who fought censorship of Tropic of Cancer, Lysistrata, and The Naked Lunch, died on April 11, 2013, at age 86. De Grazia taught at Yeshiva University’s Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York for thirty years and was the author of Girls Lean Back Everywhere: The Law of Obscenity and the Assault on Genius (1991)
• Dominic Elliott, the personal assistant of the artist David Hockney, died on March 17, 2013. He was 23 years old
• Nigel Glendinning, a scholar of Spanish art who was an expert on Francisco de Goya, passed away on February 23, 2013. He was 83 years old. Glendinning held various professorships and fellowships across the United Kingdom and Ireland
• Sidney Goodman, a figurative painter and emeritus professor of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, passed away on April 11, 2013. He was 77
• Regina Granne, an artist based in New York whose drawings demonstrated creative interpretations of feminism, war, and politics, died on January 26, 2013. She was teaching most recently at Parsons the New School for Design
• Jene Highstein, a Postminimalist sculptor whose work was shown internationally, passed away on April 27, 2013, at the age of 70. Highstein was involved in the fabled exhibition space 112 Greene Street in the 1970s
• Jack Jaeger, a Dutch artist and curator known for coediting eight issues of ZAAP, a quarterly VHS video-art magazine, from 1994 to 1996, died on March 15, 2013. Born in 1937, he also worked as a cameraman, producer, director, and editor of television commercials and films
• L. Brent Kington, a professor of metalsmithing at Southern Illinois University Carbondale from 1961 to 1997 and former chairperson of its School of Art and Design, died on February 7, 2013, at age 78. A retrospective of his career, L. Brent Kington, Mythic Metalsmith, toured the United States from 2007 to 2011
• Martyl Langsdorf, the artist who created the Doomsday Clock image that symbolized the dangers of nuclear power during the Cold War, died on March 26, 2013. She was 96 years old
• Bert Long, a former chef who left the kitchen to become an artist, passed away on February 1, 2013, at age 72. The Houston-based Long, considered an outsider artist by some, won an NEA grant in 1987 and the Prix de Rome in 1990
• Vladislav Mamyshev-Monroe, a Russian artist and gay-rights icon, died in March 2013 at the age of 43. Known for his impersonations of Marilyn Monroe, Mamyshev-Monroe emerged as a performing and video artist in Saint Petersburg in the late 1980s
• Rick Mather, an American architect based in London who designed extensions to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Dulwich Picture Gallery, and Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, among other institutions, died on April 20, 2013, at age 75
• Walter Pierce, an American architect who designed the modernist houses of Peacock Farm, a subdivision in Lexington, Massachusetts, passed away on February 27, 2013. He was 93 years old
• Joe N. Prince, director of education for the National Endowment for the Arts from 1977 to 1985, died on February 23, 2013, at age 75. He also served as special assistant to the agency’s chairman for two years
• Ganesh Pyne, an Indian artist who was called the “painter of darkness” for his fantastical imagery in watercolor, gouache, and tempera, died on March 12, 2013, at age 76. Among his his influences ranged from the Bengal school of art (a forerunner to Indian modernism) to his personal experience as a child witnessing the Kolkata riots
• Daniel Reich, an unconventional art dealer based in New York, died on December 25, 2012. He was 39 years old
• Martin Rogers, a British printer, sculptor, and publisher who founded the Small Publishers Fair in London, has died. He was 61 years old
• Dorothy Sanders, a philanthropist who founded the Milwaukee Art Museum’s African-American Art Acquisition Committee, passed away on February 13, 2013. She was 96
• James Schell, an Atlanta artist and illustrator whose works were published in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Sunday magazine, died on January 6, 2013, at age 94. He was the art director for Kirkland White and Schell Advertising, which he helped establish
• Shozo Shimamoto, a Japanese artist who was a member of the Gutai group, died on January 25, 2013, at the age of 85
• Merton D. Simpson, a painter, collector, and dealer in African art, died on March 9, 2013, at the age of 84. Simpson founded his gallery of African and tribal art in 1954, and his artwork became politicized in the early 1960s after joining the Spiral group, which counted Romare Bearden and Hale Woodruff among its members
• Paolo Soleri, the innovative architect of an ecologically minded city in the Arizona desert called Arcosanti, passed away on April 9, 2013. He was 93
• Jack Stokes, the animation director of the Beatles’ film Yellow Submarine, died on March 20, 2013. He was 92. Stokes also worked on titles and inserts for Magical Mystery Tour
• Clinton Darlington Swingle, who oversaw the purchase, preservation, and restoration of the Fabric Workshop and Museum’s building in Philadelphia, died on January 27, 2013. He was 84
• Pedro Ramírez Vázquez, a Mexican architect who combined modern and Precolumbian forms, died on April 16, 2013, at age 94. His best-known buildings are the Basilica of Guadalupe, National Museum of Anthropology, and Azteca Stadium
• William Wilson, a former critic for the Los Angeles Times, died on April 20, 2013, at the age of 78. He began writing for the paper in 1965, contributing exhibition reviews through 2001
• Zao Wou-Ki, a Chinese artist whose work combined the traditional landscape painting of his country with European abstraction, died on April 9, 2013, age 92. He had lived and worked in Paris from 1948 to 2011

Read all past obituaries in the arts in CAA News, which include special texts written for CAA. Please send links to published obituaries, or your completed texts, to Christopher Howard, CAA managing editor, for the next list.