Matthew Bowman is an art critic/historian based in East Anglia and lectures in Fine Art at the University of Suffolk. His research focuses generally on twentieth-century and contemporary art, criticism, and philosophy in the USA and Europe. The history and philosophical underpinnings of art criticism is a key research focus and a recurrent theme in his writings and he is presently completing a book about the influential October journal. Another major strand to his research is the notion of painting occupying an ‘expanded field’ and functioning as a ‘theoretical object’ that came into being in France during the late 1960s with artists such as Simon Hantaï, Daniel Buren and Christian Bonnefoi.
He has published extensively since 2008, when his essay ‘The New Critical Historians of Art?’ was included in James Elkins’ and Michael Newman’s book The State of Art Criticism. He has published a number of long peer-reviewed essays, including ‘Indiscernibly Bad: The Problem of Bad Painting/Good Art’ (Oxford Art Journal, 2018); ‘The Intertwining—Damisch, Bois, and October’s Rethinking of Painting’ (Journal of Contemporary Painting, 2019); ‘Art Criticism in the Contracted Field’ (Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 2021), among others.
He regularly writes reviews for Art Monthly and his essay ‘Representing Destruction’ appeared in the September 2021 issue. Essays have also been published in Art History, The Burlington Magazine, and Nonsite.