Profile

Biography

BA (London), MA, PhD (Essex)

Michael White is a Reader in History of Art working chiefly on the interwar avant-gardes: Constructivism, Dada and Surrealism. He wrote his doctoral thesis on Theo van Doesburg and has a special interest in De Stijl and modernism in the Netherlands.

Departmental roles

• Deputy Head of Department
• Senior Management Team
• Research Committee
• Teaching Committee
• Director of the Sculpture Studies Research School

University roles

• University Teaching Committee

Research

Overview

Michael has published widely on abstract art and modernist design, including his book De Stijl and Dutch Modernism, published by Manchester University Press in 2003 and reprinted in 2009. His interest has been in testing the predominant theoretical paradigms for describing the avant-garde by exploring the meanings attached to abstract art and their relationship to parallel modernising projects such as urban planning, interior design reform and the development of consumer culture.

He was the Consultant Curator of the Tate Modern exhibition Van Doesburg and the International Avant-Garde: Constructing a New World, which considers the career of Theo van Doesburg not merely as an artist but a propagandist for cultural renewal in fields as diverse as architecture, graphic design, publishing, film and music. Van Doesburg's role in proselytising the new and coordinating a large network of fellow artists are important themes explored in the exhibition and its accompanying catalogue.

With his long-standing involvement with the career of Theo van Doesburg, Michael has always had an interest in Dada. He has published a collection of translations he has made of Van Doesburg's dada writings and is currently engaged in a major research project on Berlin Dada, exploring issues of identity. Some of this work has been presented as papers, at the major conference 'Dada in Debate' he co-convened at Tate Modern in November 2005, at the conference 'Raoul Hausmann and the Avant-gardes' at INHA in Paris in 2008 and next at the College Art Association conference in Chicago 2010.

Research group(s)

• Architectural History and Theory
• Modern and Contemporary Culture
• Sculpture Studies

Supervision

Michael would welcome proposals for doctoral research on abstract art, theory of the avant-garde, modernist design, Dada, Constructivism and related groups.

Publications

Selected publications

Books

• Hans Janssen and Michael White, 'The Story of De Stijl / Het verhaal van De Stijl' (Ludion Press, Antwerp, 2011)
   
• Van Doesburg and the International Avant-Garde, edited by Gladys Fabre and Doris Wintgens Hötte. Consultant Editor Michael White, London: Tate, 2009 (includes Michael White, ‘Theo van Doesburg: a Counter-life’ pp.68-75)
• Theo van Doesburg, What is Dada? And Other Writings (edited, translated and presented by Michael White), London: Atlas Press, 2006
• De Stijl and Dutch Modernism (Manchester University Press: 2003)

Articles

•  ‘Cities of Style’ in Frédéric Migayrou ed., De Stijl 1917-1931, (Paris: Centre Pompidou, 2010), pp.77-84
• 'Merzzeichnung: Typology and Typography', Tate Papers, Issue 14, (http://www.tate.org.uk/research/tateresearch/tatepapers/10autumn/white01.shtm), in special collection of essays 'On Drawing' edited by Jo Applin, Jennifer Mundy and Michael White.
• 'Sense and Nonsense in Kurt Schwitters' in John Dixon Hunt, David Lomas and Michael Corris (eds.), Art, Word and Image, (London: Reaktion Books, 2010), pp. 203-13
• 'The Grosz Case: Paranoia, Self-hatred and Antisemitism', Oxford Art Journal vol.30, no.3, (2007), pp.431-53
• '"Not another Blasphemy Trial!": The Prosecution of George Grosz and Political Justice in Weimar Germany' in Daniel McClean ed., The Trials of Art, (London: Ridinghouse, 2007), pp.255-270
• 'Mechano-Facture: Dada/Constructivism at the Bauhaus' in Achim Borchardt-Hume, ed., Albers and Moholy-Nagy: From the Bauhaus to the New World, (London, Tate, 2006)
• 'Dreaming in the Abstract': Mondrian, Psychoanalysis and Abstract Art in the Netherlands', Burlington Magazine, CXLVIII, (February 2006), pp.98-106
• 'Abstraction, Sublation and the Avant-Garde: The case of De Stijl' in Dietrich Scheunemann, ed., Avant-Garde and Neo-Avant-Garde, (Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi, 2005), pp.77-90
• 'Nietzsche and the Artist' in Paul Smith and Carolyn Wilde eds., A Companion to Art Theory, (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), pp.183-195
• 'Johannes Baader's Plasto-Dio-Dada-Drama: the Mysticism of the Mass Media', Modernism/Modernity vol. 8, no.4 (November 2001), pp.583-602
• 'Spiritual Hygienists: van Doesburg, Teige and the concept of progress', Umeni, vol.XLIII, no.1 / 2, (1995), pp.63-65 De Stijl: Eine Kunst fürs Volk? / De Stijl: An Art for the People?’ in Helmut Friedel & Matthias Mühling (eds), Mondrian De Stijl, Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2011, pp.46-59. Translated as ‘De Stijl: un’arte per il popolo’ in Benno Tempel (ed.), Mondrian: L’armonia perfetta, Milan: Skira, 2011, pp.60-7
• De Stijl: Eine Kunst fürs Volk? / De Stijl: An Art for the People?’ in Helmut Friedel & Matthias Mühling (eds), Mondrian De Stijl, Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2011, pp.46-59. Translated as ‘De Stijl: un’arte per il popolo’ in Benno Tempel (ed.), Mondrian: L’armonia perfetta, Milan: Skira, 2011, pp.60-7
• ‘Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man’, Modernism/Modernity (Special Issue on Samuel Beckett), vol.18, no.4 (November 2011), pp.833-837

Teaching

Undergraduate

• Realism and Surrealism: Art and Politics between the Wars
• Theories of Abstraction
• The Making of a Modern Style 1889-1933

Postgraduate

• The Bauhaus and Weimar Culture

External activities

Invited talks and conferences

Conferences convened

• 'Obrist: Sculpture and Abstraction'
  Henry Moore Institute, 26 June 2010
• 'Abstract Connections'
  Tate Modern, 25-26 March 2010
• 'Dada in Debate'
  Tate Modern, 25-26 November 2005 (with Professor David Hopkins, University of Glasgow)

Selected Conference Papers and Talks

• 'De Stijl: 1917 and all that' 25th Van de Waal lecture, University of Leiden, September 2011
• 'Theo van Doesburg: a Singular Vision of Collectivity'
  Open University Abstraction Study Day, Tate Modern, March 2010
• 'New Youth: the Generational Politics of Club Dada'
  CAA Conference, Chicago, February 2010
• 'Space-Time and Raoul Hausmann's Mechanical Head: Dada and Jewish Neo-Kantianism'
  Department of Art and Art History, University of Texas at Austin, February 2008
• 'Arrested Development? George Grosz's Late Montages'
  CAA Conference, New York, February 2007
• 'The Pedagogy of Abstraction'
  Abstractions across the Media Symposium, Tate Modern, June 2006
• 'Afterimages: Mondrian and Dialectics'
  Art and Metaphysics, International University of Bremen, May 2006
• '"The Shoe of the Eternal Jew Creaks Perpetually Before Me": George Grosz's Self-Criticism'
  Centre for Studies of Surrealism and its Legacies, Department of Art History and Archaeology, University of Manchester, February 2004
• 'Piet Mondrian: the Image of the Artist in his Studio'
  Malcolm Easton Memorial Lecture, University of Hull, November 2004
• 'Russian Berlin: Emigrés, Immigrants and the Avant-Garde'
  Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, November 2003
• 'Bloomfield/Blumenfeld: Berlin Dada and Jewish Identity'
  Centre for German-Jewish Studies, University of Sussex, November 2003
• 'Dionysus in Devon: Willi Soukop and the Place of the Mask in Modern Sculpture'
  AAH Conference, London, April 2003
• 'Abstraction, Sublation and the Avant-Garde: the Case of De Stijl'
  Avant-Garde and Neo-Avant-Garde Conference, University of Edinburgh, March 2002