Biography
Art historian Dennis Raverty is engaged with exploring how the canon of twentieth-century art came together at midcentury, who was left out, and why. In his book, Struggle Over the Modern, (Fairleigh-Dickinson University Press, 2005), he demonstrated that not one, but several "modernisms" were all vying for predominance during the first half of the century, and how abstraction, once the "dark horse" of American art during the 1930s, came to dominate the field after 1945.
Dr. Raverty's recent research involves broadening this received canon on several fronts: African American artists residing in Paris between the wars; depression-era Social Realism's eclipse with the decline of the American Left; and more recently, the history of American illustration during the 19th-century.
His articles and criticism has appeared in Art Journal, Art in America, The International Review of African American Art, Art Criticism, The New Art Examiner, Prospects: An Annual of American Studies, Source: Notes in the History of Art. and Art Papers, where he was a contributing editor. He authored four entries for the most recent edition of the Grove Encyclopedia of American Art, published by Oxford University Press (2011).
Dr. Raverty is an Associate Professor at New Jersey City University where he teaches 19th and 20th-century art history, the art of West Africa, the diaspora and African American art, as well as the Renaissance and Baroque periods in Europe. An award-winning teacher, Raverty lives in New York City, and is currently co-authoring a book on American illustration with Dennis Dittrich, former president of the Society of Illustrators.
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