Christopher Bucklow


Christopher Bucklow is a British artist and art-historian. His work has been exhibited internationally and is held in numerous public collections including the Guggenheim Museum, Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco [Museum of Modern Art|Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco], and The Metropolitan Museum of Art among others. He has received residencies at The British Museum, London, the Banff Center for the Arts, Alberta, and The Centre for Studies in British Romanticism, Grasmere. Bucklow is best known for his ongoing photographic series Guests and his improvisational paintings from the series To Reach Inside A Vault. He is the author of numerous books and essays including The Sea of Time and Space, "This is Personal: Blake and Mental Fight" in Blake & Sons, Lifestyles and Mysticism in Contemporary Art, What is in the Dwat: The Universe of Guston's Final Decade, and the co-author of Bacon |Bacon] and the Mind: Art, Neuroscience and Psychology.

Life and work

Bucklow was born in Flixton, Greater Manchester, England. He graduated with a degree in art history in 1978. Between 1978 and 1995 he worked as a curator in the Prints & Drawings Department at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London where he researched Romanticism, photography, and developed an interest in the work of William Blake. An account of Bucklow's career as a curator and the forces that propelled his transition to art praxis can be found in "Rhetoric and Motive in the Writing of Art History: A Shapeshifter's Perspective" in Remaking Art History.
Bucklow's early work was conceptual and sculptural, often taking the form of plant species that he altered genetically or grafted together. In the 1990s he created two bodies of  photographic work, The Beauty of the World and Guest - also known as Tetrarchs, that were foundational for Britain's contemporary negative-less photography movement.
Guests was created using a 30 x 40-inch pinhole camera, built by Bucklow, with thousands of apertures to make unique cibachrome chromogenic prints. Tetrarchs were created using either a 40 x 60-inch camera, or one with a 40 x 100 inches plate size. Guest features silhouettes of persons that appear to the artist in dreams. Friends, family, and fellow artists like Matthew Barney and Adam Fuss are featured individually in the work as a collective of figures drawn by the multiple solar images directed through the 25,000 apertures in Bucklow's camera.
His interest in personal mythology, Jungian dream psychology, metaphor and the use of personification was continued in his subsequent paintings. To Reach Inside A Vault is a series of large scale improvisational paintings in which a commedia dell'arte technique is used to generate the subjects or plot. These paintings were exhibited in Bucklow's 2017 retrospective Said Now, For All Time at the Southampton City Art Gallery, UK.

Public collections

, New York
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
Museum of [Fine Arts, Houston]
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth
Dallas Museum of Art
Victoria & Albert Museum
The Wordsworth Trust, Grasmere
Honolulu Museum of Art
Herzliya Museum of Art
High Museum of Art
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Blanton Museum of Art,
Cleveland Museum of Art
Yale Center for British Art
Norton Museum, Palm Beach
Perez Art Museum Miami
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Los Angeles [County Museum of Art]

Publications

  • Bucklow, Christopher. 'The Lens Within the Heart' in Martin Harrison Bacon and the Mind: Art, Neuroscience and Psychology, The Estate of Francis Bacon & Thames & Hudson, London, 2019.. .
  • Bucklow, Christopher. Nantucket Sleighride, Southampton City Art Gallery & Ball Press, 2017...
  • Bucklow, Christopher. Life on Mars, Southampton City Art Gallery & Ball Press, 2017. .
  • Bucklow, Christopher. 'The Child Comes as Softly as Snow', essay in Adam Fuss, Catalogue, Fundacion Mapfre, Madrid, 2011, pp. 159–171. .
  • Bucklow, Christopher. 'St John's Apocalypse: Revelation, Resurrection, Rhetoric', essay in Signs of the Apocalypse/Rapture, Front Forty Press, Chicago, 2008, n.p. .
  • Bucklow, Christopher. What is in the Dwat, The Universe of Philip Guston's Final Decade, Wordsworth Trust. 1 June 2007. .
  • Bucklow, Christopher. 'Rhetoric and Motive in Writing Art History:  a Shape Shifter's Perspective', in Elizabeth C. Mansfield, Making Art History, Routledge, New York,  2007. .
  • Bucklow, Christopher. 'This is Personal: Blake and Mental Fight', in Blake & Sons, Lifestyles and Mysticism in Contemporary Art, University College, Cork, 2005 pp. 131 – 139. .
  • Mellor and Hambourg, David Alan and Maria Morris. Christopher Bucklow: Guest, Blindspot Publications, New York, October 2004. Essays by David Alan Mellor and Maria Morris Hambourg. 50 colour plates.
  • Bucklow, Christopher. 'William Blake: The Sea of Time and Space', If This Be Not I, The British Museum and the Wordsworth Trust, 2004, pp. 115–120. .
  • If This Be Not I, British Museum and The Wordsworth Trust, 2004. Essays by Marina Warner, Adam Phillips, Roger Malbert, Introduction by James Putnam.
  • Bucklow, Christopher. Seven Beginnings to Guest, Artereal Gallery, Sydney, Australia, 2006.

    Monographs

  • 2017 Alex Faulkner et al. Said Now, For All Time, Southampton City Art Gallery. Preface by Martin Harrison.
  • 2015 Alex Faulkner and Christopher Bucklow, Dimitri & Wenlop, Upton Noble, Ball Press,.
  • 2004 Prof David Alan Mellor et al. Christopher Bucklow: Guest, Blindspot Publications, New York.
  • 2004 Marina Warner et al. If This Be Not I, British Museum, London & Wordsworth Trust,  Grasmere, With an interview by Adam Philips.