Charles Cramer, PhD

Biography

Charles Cramer received his M.A. (1993) and Ph.D. (1997) in Art History from The University of Texas at Austin. He teaches courses in art history from the Renaissance to the present, including Art History II, Nineteenth Century Art, American Art, Modernism, and Contemporary Art. His primary area of specialization is the theory of European Classicism from Polykleitos to Postmodernism, with a primary historical focus on late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century France and England, though he also has interests in late-nineteenth century French Impressionism and Symbolism, in the early-twentieth century Cubist milieu, and in semiotics, the philosophy of mind and cognitive science. His publications range from the late-eighteenth century to the present, and include his book, Abstraction and the Classical Ideal, 1760-1920 (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2006), the articles "Alexander Cozens's New Method: The Blot and General Nature," The Art Bulletin vol. 79, no. 1 (March 1997): 112-129; "Duchamp from Syntax to Bride: Sa langue dans sa joue," Word & Image, vol. 13, no. 3 (July-September, 1997): 279-303; "La démarche poétique from Vico to Surrealism," New Vico Studies vol. 22 (2005): 65-86 (co-authored with Kim T. Grant); and the catalog essay "Pursuing the Horizon," in Donald Meyer: The Americanist Paradigm and The Exton Triptych (exhibition catalog: Berman Museum of Art, 2002), pp. 7-30.