Daniel Robbins (art historian)
| Daniel Robbins | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born | 1932 Brooklyn New York |
| Died | 14 January 1995 Lebanon, New Hampshire |
| Nationality | American |
| Known for | Art history, Modernism, Exhibition curation |
| Movement | Cubism, Modernism |
Daniel J. Robbins (Brooklyn, New York, 1932 – 14 January 1995, Lebanon, New Hampshire) was as American art historian, art critic, and curator, who specialized in avant-garde 20th-century art and helped encourage the study of it. Robbins' area of scholarship was on the theoretical and philosophical origins of Cubism. His writings centered on the importance of artists such as Albert Gleizes, Jean Metzinger, Henri Le Fauconnier and Jacques Villon. He was a specialist in early Modernism, writing on Salon Cubists (the Section d'Or group) and championed contemporaries such as Louise Bourgeois and the Color Field painters. Art historian Peter Brooke referred to Robbins as "the great pioneer of the broader history of Cubism".
Daniel Robbins (Jeremiah Drummer and George Gregory Dobbs, pseud.) attended the University of Chicago as an undergraduate, receiving an A.B. in 1951 at age 19. He then attended Yale University receiving an M.A. in Art History in 1955. He had initially applied at Yale to study painting, but switched to art history when he realized the painting department was overshadowed by the minimalist painter Josef Albers.
After graduating from Yale in 1955 he taught at Indiana University for one academic year (1955–1956). He then began doctoral work at New York University Institute of Fine Arts. In 1958, at the instigation of his professor Robert Goldwater, Robbins began writing a PhD dissertation on the Cubist artist and theoretician Albert Gleizes. At the time when, writes art historian David Cottington, "the expansionary momentum both of the New York art market and of post-war art-historical scholarship in the USA were creating a favorable climate for the recovery of salon cubism." The year before, a section of Gleizes' memoirs were published, offering insight into the artistic milieu of pre-1914 Paris. One of the most characteristic features of the Salon Cubists who exhibited in the public salons (e.g., Salon d'Automne and Salon des Indépendants), unlike Picasso and Braque, was that they often worked on a large scale, and they had an interest in large "epic" subjects. Daniel Robbins had coined the term Epic Cubism to distinguish their work from the more intimate painting of Picasso and Braque.
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