John Coplans
John Rivers Coplans (24 June 1920 – 21 August 2003)[1] was a British artist, art writer, curator, and museum director.
A veteran of World War II and a photographer, he emigrated to the United States in 1960 and had many exhibitions in Europe and North America.
[3] Despite the instability of his early home life, Coplans developed an enormous admiration for his father, who took him to galleries at weekends and instilled within him a love for exploration, experimentation, and a fascination with the world.
He painted part-time for clients including Cecil Beaton, Basil Deardon whilst running his business John Rivers Limited which specialised in interior decorating.
[7] In 1960, Coplans sold all of his belongings and moved to the United States, initially settling in San Francisco and taking a position at UC Berkeley as a visiting assistant design professor.
[8] His perspective on art writing was anti-elitist, using popular appeal and excitement over new work to “stimulate debate and awareness” especially for West Coast artists.
[citation needed] Coplans had a long affiliation with Artforum as one of its founding members (1962), a contributing critic, and chief editor (1971-1976).
Along with fellow founding member John Irwin he followed the magazine to Los Angeles and, in 1967, to its permanent home in New York.
Coplans's reign at Artforum was considered a time of editorial catholicity, reflecting a moment of expanding media, practices, and modes of engagement within contemporary art.
Coplans began a series of exhibitions in a small gallery in the old Pasadena Art Museum which included West Coast artists Dewain Valentine, Doug Wheeler, James Turrell, Robert Irwin, Wayne Thiebaud, and Judy Chicago.
[12] Many of the catalogue essays that accompanied these exhibitions were also published in Artforum, bringing critical attention for these West Coast artists to a New York audience.
During his leadership he brought many exhibitions to Akron from New York and helped the institution to focus on photography and art of the nineteenth century and thereafter.
[13] Coplans wrote critical essays on the work of such artists as Andy Warhol, Robert Smithson, Philip Guston, and Donald Judd, many of which are included in his anthology entitled Provocations (1996).
[16] His artist monographs include A Body (2002)[17] and A Self-Portrait: John Coplans 1984-1997[18] which was published in tandem with his solo exhibition by the same title at MoMA P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in New York, 1997.
His challenge of the ageist norm and beauty standards in Western culture, as articulated through his photography, has been studied in books such as Christophe Blazer's The Century of the Body,[19] James Hall's The Self Portrait: A Cultural History,[20] Jules Sturm's Bodies We Fail: Productive Embodiments of Imperfection,[21] Davis Melody's The Male Nude in Contemporary Photography,[22] and many others.
