Paul Wood began working for the Open University in the 1980s as a part-time Tutor in Scotland, based in Edinburgh. Since the 1990s he has worked in the Dept of Art History at Milton Keynes. His main involvement has been in the history of the modern movement. Previously, he was a Tutor on A315, Modern Art & Modernism which ran between 1983 and 1992, a Course Team member on A316 Modern Art: Practices and Debates from 1992 to 2003. He is currently Course Team Chair of AA318 Art of the Twentieth Century which appeared in 2004. He also works on the second level course A216, Art and its Histories and has written on the relation between non-western art and the ‘modern movement’ for the level 1 course AA100 The Arts Past and Present. His work has been published in numerous books, catalogues and journals in the field. His principal research interests lie in the theory of modernism and the avant-garde, and in revolutionary art and realism. More recently, he has worked on contemporary questions of globalisation and the relation of the western canon to non-western art. He is currently working on issues around the ‘Benin bronzes’ and is involved in a joint project with the Open University and the British Museum on Ancient Egyptian art.
In collaboration with Charles Harrison, he began Art in Theory in the early 1990s: a project to document the changing ideas which have informed the practice of modern art. Art in Theory 1900-1990 was published in 1992. Charles Harrison and Paul Wood were then joined by Jason Gaiger, and subsequently two further volumes have appeared, tracing the process back to the mid-seventeenth century: Art in Theory 1815-1900 and Art in Theory 1648-1815. In 2002 a new edition of the twentieth century volume was published as Art in Theory 1900-2000, thus completing the project to document the theoretical formation of the art of the extended modern period from the founding of the Academy to post-modernism.
Art in Theory 1900-2000, Oxford, Blackwell 2002, co-edited with Charles Harrison
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Art in Theory 1815-1900, Oxford, Blackwell, 1998, co-edited with Charles Harrison and Jason Gaiger
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Art in Theory 1648-1815, Oxford, Blackwell, 2000, co-edited with Charles Harrison and Jason Gaiger
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Conceptual Art, Tate Publications, London 2002
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The Challenge of the Avant-Garde, edited by Paul Wood, (Yale University Press in association with The Open University, 1999)
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‘An Aesthetic of Diversity: Venice and the East’, in Carol Richardson (ed.), Locating Renaissance Art, (Yale University Press in association with The Open University, 2007)
‘Reality Check’ (review article of David Summers, World Art History), Oxford Art Journal, 29:2, 2006
‘Orbiting Atlantis’ (review article on the Soviet avant-garde), Art Journal, New York, 65:3, 2006
‘The Idea of an Abstract Art’, in Steve Edwards and Paul Wood (eds), Art of the Avant-Gardes, (Yale University Press in association with The Open University, 2004)
‘The Neo-Avant-Garde’, in Paul Wood (ed.), Varieties of Modernism, (Yale University Press in association with The Open University, 2004)
‘Inside the Whale: an Introduction to Postmodernist Art’, in Gill Perry and Paul Wood (eds), Themes in Contemporary Art, (Yale University Press in association with The Open University, 2004)
‘Art of the Twentieth Century’, in Jason Gaiger (ed.), Frameworks for Modern Art, (Yale University Press in association with The Open University, 2003)
‘Modernism and the Idea of the Avant-Garde’ in Paul Smith and Carolyn Wilde (eds), A Companion to Art Theory, (Blackwell, 2002)
‘Art in Italy 1943-1973’, in Cultural Revolution 2, (Open University Press, 2001)
‘The Ends of the Earth’ in 292. Essays in Visual Culture, (Edinburgh, 2000)
‘Genius and Melancholy: the Art of Dürer’, in Emma Barker, Nick Webb and Kim Woods (eds), The Changing Status of the Artist, (Yale University Press, 1999)
‘Commodity’ in Robert S. Nelson and Richard Shiff (eds), Critical Terms for Art History, (University of Chicago Press, 1996/2003
‘Art & Language: Wrestling with the Angel’, in Art & Language, (Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris 1993)
‘Realisms and Realities’, in Briony Fer, David Batchelor, Paul Wood (eds), Realism, Rationalism, Surrealism: Art Between the Wars, (Yale University Press, 1993)
‘The Politics of the Avant-Garde’ in The Great Utopia, Russian and Soviet Art 1915-1932, (Guggenheim Museum, New York 1992)
See also Open Research Online for further details of Paul Wood’s research publications.
