Yve-Alain Bois - Biography

Yve-Alain Bois, Ph.D., born in Constantine, Algeria on April 16, 1952, holds the Roland Barthes Chair at the European Graduate School EGS. Yve-Alain Bois was the Joseph Pulitzer Professor of Modern Art and Chair, Department of History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University and is currently a Professor of Art History at the Institute for Advanced Study / School of Historical Studies in Princeton.

Yve-Alain Bois received an M.A. for his work on El Lissitzky's typography from the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris in 1973, and a Ph.D. in 1977 on Lissitzky's and Malevich's conceptions of space from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, both supervised by Roland Barthes. Yve-Alain Bois was also one of the co-founders and a co-director of the Macula magazine (1976–79) and of the Macula book series, 1976-. He is a contributing editor to Artforum.

Yve-Alain Bois is a highly esteemed art historian who has been broadening the horizons of this discipline with new approaches originating from French philosophy and critical theory. His research and academic engagement took place at the most prestigious institutes world-wide, such as Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (Attaché 1977-81, Chargé de recherche, 1981-83); Johns Hopkins University (Visiting Associate Professor, 1983-84, Associate Professor, 1984-89, Professor, 1989-91); Harvard University (Joseph Pulitzer, Jr., Professorship of Modern Art, 1991-2005, acting chair, Department of History of Art and Architecture, 1999-2000, chair, 2002-2005); Institute for Advanced Study (Professor, 2005-); Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres (2002); Member, American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Yve-Alain Bois is a co-editor of the Journal October, a curator and noted philosopher of art. A specialist in 20th-century European and American art, he has written extensively on a wide range of artists, from Matisse, Picasso, Malevich and Mondrian to post-war American art (among others, Barnett Newman, Ellsworth Kelly, Richard Serra, Orbert Ryman, Brice Marden, Donald Judd, Edward Ruscha and Mel Bochner). Yve-Alain Bois published the following books: Matisse and Picasso (1998), for which he received the Alfred H. Barr award in 2001; Formless: A User’s Guide (with Rosalind Krauss, 1998); Painting as Model (1990); and Art Since 1900 (with Benjamin Buchloh, Hal Foster, and Rosalind Krauss, 2004). Yve-Alain Bois is preparing a a study of Barnett Newman’s paintings, finishing the catalogue raisonné of Ellsworth Kelly’s paintings and sculptures, and researching the modern history of axonometric projection.

Yve-Alain Bois has curated and co-curated several influential exhibitions in the past decade, including Piet Mondrian, A Retrospective (1994-95) at Gemmentemuseum, The Hague, The National Gallery of Art, Washingtin, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. In 1996, he curated with Rosalind Krauss L'informe, mode d'emploi at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. Most recently, he also curated the exhibitions Matisse and Picasso: A Gentle Rivalry at the Kimbell Museum of Art (Fort Worth, Texas, 1999), and Ellsworth Kelly: The Early Drawings 1948-1955 at the Fogg Artt Museum (Cambridge, MA); this latter exhibition was also shown at the High Museum (Atlanta), the Chicago Art Institute, Kunstmuseum (Winterthur), and other venues (1999-2000).