109 Pickard Hall Columbia, Missouri 65211-1420   phone: 573-882-6711   fax: 573-884-5269   email: aha@missouri.edu

Kurt Rahmlow

Assistant Teaching Professor
Modern and Contemporary Art
Ph.D. (Art History), University of Iowa
M.A. (Art History), University of Iowa
M.A. (English), Northeastern University

mailing address:
Department of Art History and Archaeology
109 Pickard Hall
Columbia, MO 65211-1420

phone: 573-882-9532
fax: 573-884-5269
email: RahmlowK@missouri.edu

Teaching

• AHA 2005: Topics in Art History
  Fun and Games: Leisure, Play, and Entertainment in Modern and Contemporary Art
• AHA 3750: Modern Art in Europe and America
• AHA 3760: Contemporary Art
• AHA 4005/7005: Topics in Art History
  Earthworks and Environmental Art
• AHA 4760/7760: Modern Sculpture
• AHA 8750: Seminar in Modern and Contemporary Art: Symbolist Art in Europe, 1870-1920

Research

I specialize in nineteenth- and twentieth-century art of Europe and, to some degree, America, as well as in aesthetics and critical theory. My primary research interests include avant-garde artists' communities in Europe, particularly in France, and avant-garde approaches to decorative art. Because of my early training in literary studies, I have a strong interest in interdisciplinary approaches to art historical scholarship, artists' writings, and artists who themselves take an interdisciplinary approach to art-making. Curiously enough, my intellectual interests also include the history of automobile design and representations of automobiles and "car culture" in Modern and Contemporary art.

At present, most of my scholarship relates to Symbolist art in Europe in one way or another. My doctoral dissertatation, “Anterior Decorators: Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Avant-Garde Environments at Arles and Le Pouldu,” considers the decorative environments that these two artists created to house, encourage, and instruct utopian artists’ communities. I am currently preparing several articles for publication. One treats Paul Gauguin’s interest in craft and the decorative arts. A second considers Vincent van Gogh’s use of metaphor in his letters, particularly as it relates to his early reading habits. A third examines Edward Steichen’s role in Euro-American debates over Impressionist and Symbolist trends within Pictorialist photography during the first decade of the twentieth century.

I have presented papers at the annual meetings of the Society for Utopian Studies and the College Art Association. My research has been supported by several grants and fellowships at The University of Iowa, including a Bodine Fellowship, a Longman Fellowship, a T. Anne Clearly International Travel Research Fellowship, and a Seashore Dissertation-Year Fellowship.

Teaching Experience

I have taught English literature and rhetoric at Northeastern University and The University of Iowa, and I have taught art history at The University of Iowa and the University of Missouri.