Background
Peter Plagens was born on March 1, 1941 in Dayton, Ohio, United States. He grew up in Los Angeles.
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, United States
In 1962 Peter Plagens received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Southern California.
Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York, United States
In 1964 Peter Plagens obtained a Master of Fine Arts degree from Syracuse University.
(This book, full of rare illustrations, surveys and docume...)
This book, full of rare illustrations, surveys and documents the work of West Coast artists from 1945 to the 1970s, with glances back to the art schools and movements of the first half of the century. Twenty-five years after its first publication it is still our most trenchant record of that period in American art history. Writing as an artist and critic who observed firsthand the vital and innovative postwar art scene in California, Plagens has provided an invaluable record of the artists and work created in Los Angeles and San Francisco and, more briefly, in Seattle and the northwest.
https://www.amazon.com/Sunshine-Muse-West-Coast-1945-1970/dp/0520223926/?tag=2022091-20
1974
(A painting that alters itself, or is altered, while the a...)
A painting that alters itself, or is altered, while the artist sleeps. A computer that may be God and quacks like a duck. A basketball forward who disappears in the middle of a drive, then reappears. An evangelist who screams himself out of the moment as his wife and childrean are blown to smithereens by a bomb dropped from a balloon.The evangelist's former wife who becomes Axis Sally. A cult of computer programmers. In this robust fiction debut, Peter Plagens, the art critic for Newsweek magazine and himself a painter, has written a novel about time, perception, the nature of reality, and characters who transform themselves or are transformed as the painting is transformed. In theme and technique, Time for Robo invotes comparison with Gravity's Rainbow and Slaughterhouse Five.
https://www.amazon.com/Time-Robo-Peter-Plagens/dp/0930773543/?tag=2022091-20
1999
(The Art Critic is a novel about Arthur, a talented, sligh...)
The Art Critic is a novel about Arthur, a talented, slightly jaded mid-career art critic for a national newsweekly. It is also a novel about Tom, a mid-career sculptor, often more focused on making it big than on making art. Between these two men is Helen, the smart, beautiful, moneyed publishing assistant they both desire.
https://www.amazon.com/Art-Critic-Peter-Plagens-ebook/dp/B00846MXC0/?tag=2022091-20
2008
(In Bruce Nauman: The True Artist, Peter Plagens – a renow...)
In Bruce Nauman: The True Artist, Peter Plagens – a renowned writer, critic, and author who has known Nauman for more than forty years – delivers a personal and authoritative account tracing Nauman’s entire career, from his youth in Fort Wayne, Indiana, to his graduate work at the University of California, and through to the present day.
https://www.amazon.com/Bruce-Nauman-Artist-Peter-Plagens/dp/0714849952/?tag=2022091-20
2014
Peter Plagens was born on March 1, 1941 in Dayton, Ohio, United States. He grew up in Los Angeles.
In 1962 Peter Plagens received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Southern California. In 1964 he obtained a Master of Fine Arts degree from Syracuse University.
From 1966 to 1969 Peter Plagens was an instructor at the University of Texas, Austin. From 1969 to 1978 he served as an associate professor at California State University, Northridge. In 1972 he was a visiting artist at the University of California, Berkeley. From 1978 to 1980 Plagens worked as a visiting associate professor of art at the University of Southern California.
From 1980 to 1984 he was a professor and chair of art department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 2005 Peter Plagens was Mellon Distinguished Visiting Professor at Middlebury College. In 2009 and 2011 he was a visiting professor at New York University.
Plagens began exhibiting professionally in 1967, and was featured in the 1971 Los Angeles County Museum of Art show, "24 Young Los Angeles Artists" and the 1972 Whitney Biennial. He has shown at Nancy Hoffman Gallery in New York since 1975, and showed regularly at the Jan Baum Gallery in Los Angeles (1977–1992) and Jan Cicero Gallery in Chicago (1986 – 1998). From 1989 to 2003 he was a senior writer and art critic for Newsweek. Currently, Plagens is an art critic for The Wall Street Journal.
(In Bruce Nauman: The True Artist, Peter Plagens – a renow...)
2014(This book, full of rare illustrations, surveys and docume...)
1974(The Art Critic is a novel about Arthur, a talented, sligh...)
2008(A painting that alters itself, or is altered, while the a...)
1999As a painter, Peter Plagens is influenced by Hans Hofmann, Willem de Kooning, Richard Diebenkorn and Elmer Bischoff.
In 1981 Peter Plagens married Laurie Fendrich.