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Faculty » Susan Laxton
Man Ray, Untitled Rayograph [Scissors and cut paper], 1927.
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California.
2008 Man Ray Trust/Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY/ADGP, Paris.
Assistant Professor
Office: Arts Building
Phone: (951) 827-4634
E-mail: slaxton@ucr.edu
Ph.D., Columbia University
Areas of specialization: History and theory of photography; European avant-garde art of the 20th century, particularly its engagements with chance and psychoanalysis; critical theory.
Susan Laxton’s 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 – 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’s inception to its digitized present.
Professor Laxton is currently on leave at the Institute for Advanced Studies, where she is completing a book on ludic strategies in Dada and Surrealism. She will arrive on campus in fall, 2010.