Max Kozloff


Max Kozloff is an American art historian, art critic of modern art and photographer. He has been art editor at The Nation, and Executive Editor of Artforum. His essay "American Painting During the Cold War" is of particular importance to the criticism on American Abstract Expressionism.

Early life and education

He was born in Chicago, Illinois. He graduated from the University of Chicago in 1953. Between 1954 and 1956 he served in the U.S. Army, before returning to the University of Chicago for his M.A. degree in 1958. He joined New York University's Institute of Fine Arts in 1959 to pursue a Ph.D. degree, and was subsequently awarded a Fulbright Fellowship for 1962–1963.

Career

He started his career with a teaching position at New York University, and joined The Nation as art critic in 1961, where he worked until 1968, and Art International.
In 1964, he left NYU without a degree and began working at Artforum as an associate editor. In 1965 he received an Ingram Merrill Foundation Fellowship, and in 1966, received the Frank Jewett Mather Award for art criticism from the College Art Association of America. He became Artforum's contributing editor in 1967 and rose up to become its executive editor between 1975 and 1977. Meanwhile in 1976, he became an art photographer, and in the following years held numerous shows and became a photography critic.
He joined the faculty of School of Visual Arts in 1989. He also remained a faculty at the California Institute of the Arts.
He received the 1968 Guggenheim Fellowship and later the Infinity Award for Writing in 1990, given by the International Center of Photography.

Personal life

Kozloff married the artist Joyce Blumberg in 1967.
In 1968, he signed the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.

Publications