Sebastian Smee is an Australian-born Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic for The Washington Post[ "Globe art critic Sebastian Smee wins Pulitzer", Boston Globe website ] and the author of several books on art history.
Education and career
Educated at St Peter's College, Adelaide, Smee graduated from the University of Sydney with an Honours degree in fine arts in 1994 and moved to
Boston in 2008, having also lived in the United Kingdom between 2001 and 2004.
["2011 Pulitzer Prize Criticism Biography", Pulitzer Prize website]["Sebastian Smee biography", Boston Globe website] Before joining
The Boston Globe he was national art critic for
The Australian and has also worked for
The Daily Telegraph and contributed to
The Guardian,
The Times,
The Financial Times,
The Independent on Sunday,
The Art Newspaper,
Modern Painters,
Prospect magazine and
The Spectator.
He won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism for his "vivid and exuberant writing about art, often bringing great works to life with love and appreciation".["2011 Pulitzer Prize Criticism Citation", Pulitzer Prize website ]
In 2015, after Smee criticised the "Renoir Sucks at Painting" protest at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Max Geller — the leader of the movement — challenged Smee to a duel on Boston Common.
Works
Smee is the author of the books
Side by Side: Picasso v Matisse (2002) and
Lucian Freud (2007). In 2016,
The Art of Rivalry was published. The book examines the relationships between four pairs of artists —
Henri Matisse and
Pablo Picasso, de Kooning and
Jackson Pollock,
Lucian Freud and Bacon, and
Edgar Degas and Manet.
In 2024,
Paris in Ruins: Love, War, and the Birth of Impressionism was published. It devotes attention to the Franco-Prussian War, the
Paris Commune, and
Impressionism artists, particularly Édouard Manet and
Berthe Morisot.
[ The New York Times review][ The Washington Post review]
Smee is author of the 72nd issue of the Quarterly Essay titled "Net Loss: The Inner Life in the Digital Age" (2018).
Publications
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Sebastian Smee (2002). Side by Side: Picasso v Matisse, Duffy & Snellgrove,
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Sebastian Smee (2007). Lucian Freud, Taschen,
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Sebastian Smee (2016). The Art of Rivalry: Four Friendships, Betrayals, and Breakthroughs in Modern Art, Profile Books,
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Anita Hill, Sebastian Smee, Cornelia Butler (2018). Mark Bradford, London and New York: Phaidon Press,
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External links