{"id":238,"date":"2015-01-22T17:07:32","date_gmt":"2015-01-23T01:07:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arthistory.ucr.edu\/?page_id=238"},"modified":"2026-02-02T08:55:02","modified_gmt":"2026-02-02T16:55:02","slug":"susan-laxton","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/arthistory.ucr.edu\/faculty\/susan-laxton\/","title":{"rendered":"Susan Laxton"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Associate Professor, CHAIR<\/span>
\nPh.D., Columbia University<\/p>\n<\/i> 235 Arts Building
\n<\/i> (951) 827-1404
\n<\/i> susan.laxton@ucr.edu<\/a>
\n<\/a><\/i> Curriculum Vitae<\/p>\n

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Biography\/Education<\/strong><\/span>Research\/Teaching<\/strong><\/span>Selected Publications<\/strong><\/span>Books<\/strong><\/span><\/div>
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Susan Laxton\u2019s interests range across the alternative art practices introduced by the European avant-gardes of the 20th century, among them photography, collage, photomontage, and automatic or chance-based processes \u2013 all practices that emphatically challenged the conventions of traditional mediums like sculpture and painting. Photography, as a medium simultaneously engaged with technology, mass media, documentation and art, has been central to her understanding of modern and contemporary art as both a model for and challenge to the visual arts from the medium\u2019s inception to its digital present. Professor Laxton has received fellowships from the Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton; the Hellman Foundation, The Gould Foundation, and the Borchard Foundation. Her work has appeared in such publications as October,<\/em>  Critical Inquiry<\/em>, History of Photography<\/em> and Transbordeur, <\/em>and in numerous catalogs and edited volumes. Professor Laxton\u2019s book, Surrealism at Play<\/em>, came out with Duke University Press in 2019, and she is currently at work on a new manuscript: Juxtographers<\/em>, as well as an edited volume on play and art.<\/p>\n

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Education<\/strong><\/p>\n

2004 Ph.D., Columbia University, Department of Art History and Archaeology
\n1994 M.A., Columbia University, Department of Art History and Archaeology
\n1981 B.S., Drexel University<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Research Interests:
\n<\/strong>Avant-garde art in Europe, 1918-1945
\nPlay strategies in modern and contemporary art
\nCritical Theory, Structuralism and Poststructuralism
\nHistory of Photography<\/p>\n

Undergraduate courses offered:
\n<\/strong>History and Theory of the Avant-Garde
\nModern Art 1900-1945
\nPhotography on Display
\nDada
\nSurrealism
\nPhotography and the Body
\n19th Century Photography
\n20th Century Photography
\nPhotography Since 1960<\/p>\n

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 Graduate Seminars:
\n<\/strong>Surrealism
\nPhotography Theory
\nCuratorial Seminar
\nCuratorial Practicum<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Books and Edited Volumes<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Surrealism at Play <\/i>(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019).<\/p>\n

Unruly Bodies: Dismantling Larry Clark’s<\/i> Tulsa (Riverside: California Museum of Photography, 2016), editor.<\/p>\n

Confessions* of a Male Chauvinist Pig<\/em>. (ed.) Ex. cat. Riverside: California Museum of Photography, 2013.<\/p>\n

Paris as Gameboard: Man Ray\u2019s Atgets<\/em>. Ex. cat. New York: The Wallach Gallery, 2002.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Articles and Book Chapters
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\u201cLe mot d\u2019esprit et sa relation au composite,\u201d Transbordeur<\/em>  7 (2023) 38-49.<\/p>\n

\u201cPhotography that Plays,\u201d A Field Guide to Photography<\/em>, (Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago)<\/p>\n

 \u201cPlay, Games and Chance,\u201d The Routledge Companion to Surrealism<\/em>, (New York, Taylor and Francis)<\/p>\n

 \u201cPsicofotograf\u00eda<\/em>: Grete Stern and the Administration of the Unconscious,\u201d October<\/em> 172 (Spring 2020), 35-67.  <\/p>\n

“Photomontage in the Present Perfect Continuous,” History of Photography<\/em>, Special Issue: Is Photomontage Over? Vol. 43, No. 2 (2019), 191-205.<\/p>\n

\u201cMoholy\u2019s Doubt,\u201d in Photography and Doubt,<\/em> Andr\u00e9s Zervigon and Sabine Kriebel, eds. (New York: Routledge, 2016).<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Fugitive: citation and flux in William Burroughs\u2019 rephotography.\u201d Taking Shots: The Photographs of William Burroughs<\/em>, Patricia Allmer and John Sears, eds. London: Prestel, 2014.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs Photography: Mechanicity, Contingency, and Other-Determination in Gerhard Richter\u2019s Overpainted Snapshots,\u201d Critical Inquiry<\/em>. Vol. 38, No. 4: Summer 2012, p. 776-795.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhite Shadows: Photograms around 1922. Inventing Abstraction<\/em>, Leah Dickerman, ed. New York: MoMA, 2012. Winner, Daedalus Award for Best Exhibition Catalog, 2012.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Surreality Effect.\u201d Drawing Surrealism<\/em>, Leslie Jones, ed. Los Angeles: LACMA, 2012.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom Judgment to Process: the Modern Ludic Field.\u201d From Diversion to Subversion: Games, Play, and Twentieth-Century Art<\/em>, David Getsy, ed. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2011.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is Not a Drawing.\u201d The Exquisite Corpse: Collaboration, Creativity, and the World\u2019s Most Popular Parlor Game<\/em>, Tom Denlinger, Kanta Kochhar-Lindgren, and Davis Schneiderman, eds. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2010.<\/p>\n

\u201cFlou: Rayographs and the Dada Automatic,\u201d October<\/em> 127: Winter 2009, p. 25-48.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Good Fairy Automatism.\u201d Chance Aesthetics<\/em>, Meredith Malone, ed., St. Louis: The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, 2009. Winner, Midwest Art Society Award for Outstanding Catalog, 2009<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat Photographs Don\u2019t Know.\u201d Photography Between Poetics and Politics: The Critical Position of the Photographic Medium in Contemporary Art<\/em>, Hilde VanGelder and Helen Westgeest, eds. Leuven: University Press Leuven, 2008. Chinese translation, 2012.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Guarantor of Chance: Surrealism\u2019s Ludic Practices.\u201d Papers of Surrealism Vol. 1, No. 1: Winter 2003. http:www.surrealismcentre.ac.uk\/publications\/papers\/<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"\"Surrealism at Play<\/a>
\n<\/span>2019, DUKE UNIVERSITY Press<\/span>
\nSusan Laxton, author<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

In Surrealism at Play<\/i> Susan Laxton writes a new history of surrealism in which she traces the centrality of play to the movement and its ongoing legacy. For surrealist artists, play took a consistent role in their aesthetic as they worked in, with, and against a post-World War I world increasingly dominated by technology and functionalism. Whether through exquisite-corpse drawings, Man Ray\u2019s rayographs, or Joan Mir\u00f3\u2019s visual puns, surrealists became adept at developing techniques and processes designed to guarantee aleatory outcomes. In embracing chance as the means to produce unforeseeable ends, they shifted emphasis from final product to process, challenging the disciplinary structures of industrial modernism. As Laxton demonstrates, play became a primary method through which surrealism refashioned artistic practice, everyday experience, and the nature of subjectivity.<\/div>\n

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\nUnruly Bodies: Dismantling Larry Clark\u2019s Tulsa<\/a><\/a><\/span>
\n<\/span>Riverside: California Museum of Photography, 2016
\n<\/span>Susan Laxton, editor<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

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Between 1963 and 1971, the photographer Larry Clark shot and filmed his close group of friends, drug addicts in Tulsa, Oklahoma. When the images were published as the photo book <\/span>Tulsa<\/i><\/span> (1971), the pictures seared the wholesome image of the American heartland with graphic depictions of sex, drugs, and violence. Clark\u2019s <\/span>expos\u00e9<\/i><\/span> was regarded alternately as a wretched narrative of the decline of American youth, accomplished at the expense of the bodies it represented, and welcomed as an artistic watershed of participant observer-oriented personal documentary valued for the photographer\u2019s privileged access to hidden subcultures. Published in conjunction with the eponymous exhibition at the California Museum of Photography, <\/span>Unruly Bodies<\/i><\/span> seeks to remix Clark\u2019s original story into a critical exhibition that moves beyond sensationalism toward examining the implications of such a photographic project for contemporary life.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\"Confessions\"Confessions* of a Male Chauvinist Pig<\/a>
\n<\/span>2013, (ed.) Ex. cat. Riverside: California Museum of Photography<\/span>
\nSusan Laxton, editor<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Confessions* of a Male Chauvinist Pig,<\/em> a collection of essays written in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name at the California Museum of Photography, reconsiders Garry Winograd\u2019s book project Women Are Beautiful<\/em> (1975). Women Are Beautiful<\/em> is a set of 85 photographs culled from the hundreds Winogrand shot of women in public places between 1964 and 1973. Initially bearing the controversial subtitle \u201cObservations of a Male Chauvinist Pig,\u201d Winogrand\u2019s book struggled to find a publisher and then withered in the light of feminist critique once it appeared. Confessions* <\/em>aims to reorganize the photographs into a critical exhibition that places the project in the context of the turbulent 1960s, at the nexus of gender relations buffeted by the conflicting terms of the sexual revolution and the women\u2019s movement, particularly in light of the consumption of women in media images.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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