Ed Krčma

I work on art since 1945, focusing especially on that made in Europe and the United States in the 1950s and ‘60s, and on contemporary practice. Ideas of particularly interest concern questions about art’s involvement with the conditions of everyday life; the image/text dialogue and how this relates to forms of thinking; the relationship of contemporary art to medieval and early modern art and thought; and in the history and theory of drawing, especially as it connects with other forms and practices, such as writing, film, sculpture, and the mass media. My first monograph, published by Yale University Press in 2017, explored the extraordinary solvent transfer drawings that Robert Rauschenberg made after Dante’s Inferno, 1958-60.

I joined the Department of Art History and World Art Studies at UEA in 2015 and am now Associate Professor here. My scholarly essays – on artists ranging from Wols, Eva Hesse, and Robert Rauschenberg, to Tacita Dean, Vivienne Koorland, and Pavel Büchler – have been pubished in journals such as Art History, Oxford Art Journal, The Burlington Magazine, Master Drawings, and Umění/Art, and in exhibition catalogues for institutions including the Museum of Modern Art (New York), Tate Modern (London), the National Gallery of Ireland (Dublin), and the Fruitmarket Gallery (Edinburgh). I currently have articles and essays forthcoming in American Art (Fall 2023) and for the Moravian Gallery (Brno, Czech Republic). I am currently at work exploring the medieval/contemporary relationshp in a major exhibition project, The Rule: Shaping Lives, Medieval and Modern, to be staged at the Sainsbury Centre, Norwich, in 2026 (curated together with Dr. Jessica Barker, Courtauld Institute); I am also working on a book project concerning the idea of ‘compression’ in contemporary art.

I tend to work by moving outwards from a close engagement with the work itself, and am attracted to ideas and methods drawn from phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and critical theory, not least for their insistence upon the yield of attending closely to the specific, particular aspects of works, texts, personal experiences, or social structures. In this I have gained a huge amount from my longstanding working relationships with artists, whose perspectives and insights I have valued enormously.

B.A. History of Art, Nottingham University, 2000

M.A. History of Art, University College London, 2002

Ph.D. History of Art, University College London, 2007

Head of Department, Art History and World Art Studies, July 2021-present

Departmental Research Coordinator, September 2019-June 2021

Unit of Assessment Coordinator, Art History and World Art Studies, September 2016-July 2018

Acting Head of Department, Art History and World Art Studies, autumn 2017

Teaching Interests:

American art after 1945

European art after 1945

History and Theory of Drawing

Contemporary art

The relationship between art, theory and philosophy in the 20th and 21st centuries

Phd Supervision: 

Ed is currently primary supervisor for the following PhD projects:

Georgia Kelly, Sep 2022-Present, 'Isabel Rawsthorne and the Subject of Portraiture (provisional title)', UEA Faculty Studentship

Ben Street, Jan 2020-Present, ‘Philip Guston's Pantheon: Painting as Art-Historical Practice’

Sarah Kelleher (based University College Cork), Irish Research Council funded. Sculpture's Metamorphoses: A study of the work of Maud Cotter, Dorothy Cross and Alice Maher since 2000'

Completed PhDs (primary supervisor):

Marta Colombo, 2018-2023 (based at the University of Kent), 'Theatricality and the Endgames of Sculpture in the Work of Alik Cavaliere, 1960-1989' (CHASE funded)

Grace Thompson, Oct 2018-Present, CHASE funded. ‘Generating a Democratic Void: The Tate Turbine Hall Series and Its Public Spheres’ (UEA, Fully funded by AHRC)

Rachel Warriner: 'Nancy Spero: Pain and Politics, 1966-1976' (UCC, Fully funded by the Irish Research Council)

Kirstie North: ‘Pedem Referens: Art Historical Memory and the Analogue in the Work of Tacita Dean, Jeremy Millar and Lucy Skaer’ (UCC)

Ed welcomes PhD proposals on subjects close to his current research interests. Please feel free to contact him directly for an initial discussion about potential PhD projects.

modern and contemporary art

Robert Rauschenberg and American art in the 50s and 60s

history and theory of drawing

art theory

visual art and literature