Recent courses
Lectures
• Introduction to Modern Art, Architecture and Design
• Modern Sculpture, Canova to Koons, Quinn and Kapoor
• The Modernist Project: Art in Europe and the U.S., 1905-1980
• Rethinking Reason: Dada and Surrealism in Europe and the U.S.
• The Art Museum: History, Theory, Design (co-taught with Eric Mumford, Fox School)
Seminars
• More Than Eye Candy: The Decorative Aesthetic in Modernism, 1860-1960
• Modern War in Art
• Formalism and its Discontents
• Rethinking Matisse
• Who Is That? How Do We Know? Critical Studies in Portraiture, Ancient to Contemporary
• The Century of Picasso
Recent Publications
Matisse and Decoration (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2018). https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300135640/matisse-and-decoration
Review by Karl Buchberg in The Burlington Magazine 162 (May 2020): 464-65.
Review by Gordon Hughes in H-France Review: https://hfrance.net/vol22reviews/vol22no94_Hughes.pdf
“Matisse and Water,” in Matisse and the Sea, ed. Simon Kelly (Saint Louis Art Museum, 2024), pp. 39-49.
Book review: of Matthew Affron, Cécile Debray, and Claudine Grammont, ed., Matisse in the 1930s, in H-France Review 23, no. 202 (December 2023). URL: https://h-france.net/vol23reviews/vol23_no202_Klein.pdf
“Is Matisse’s Bathers with a Turtle a Cubist Painting?” Venue 1, no. 1 (2022). URL: https://venuemahs-ojs-baylor.tdl.org/venuemahs/article/view/75/43
Book review: of Louise Rogers Lalaurie, Matisse: The Books, in H-France Review 22, no. 85 (May 2022). URL: https://h-france.net/vol22reviews/vol22no85_Klein.pdf
“Matisse and Slow Looking,” for Human Ties blog, Center for the Humanities, Washington University, December 2, 2019. URL: https://humanities.wustl.edu/features/john-klein-matisse-and-slow-looking
“Triumph and Disaster of Collaboration: Henri Matisse and the Gobelins, 1946-49,” in L’Invention partagée / Shared Invention, ed. Laurence Riviale and Jean-François Luneau (Clermont-Ferrand, France: Presses universitaires Blaise-Pascal, 2018), pp. 195-209.
“Décoration” (on Matisse and decoration), invited article for Tout Matisse, ed. Claudine Grammont (Paris: Éditions Robert Laffont, 2018), pp. 235-39.
Foreword in brochure for exhibition The Modern Meal: Sustenance Through Ritual, Arthur Greenberg Undergraduate Curatorial Fellowship, Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University, 2017.
Book review: of Yve-Alain Bois, ed., Matisse in the Collection of the Barnes Foundation, in CAA.Reviews, May 18, 2017. URL: http://www.caareviews.org/reviews/2925
“Object or Design? Aesthetic Mobility in Matisse’s Paper Cut-Outs,” in The Challenge of the
Object / Die Herausforderung des Objekts, Conference Proceedings of the 33rd International Congress of the History of Art (Nuremberg 2012), ed. G. Ulrich Grossman and Petra Krutisch (Nuremberg: Germanisches Nationalmuseum, 2013), pp. 728-29.
“The Inner Circles of Fauve Portraiture,” in Henri Matisse and the Fauves, ed. Heinz Widauer and Claudine Grammont (Vienna: Albertina Museum, 2013), pp. 284-91. Also published in German.
Selected recent conference papers, lectures and other presentations
“Thinking About Matisse: Recent Research, New Directions,” keynote lecture in the opening event for the exhibition Matisse by Matisse, UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, China (online), July 2023.
Respondent in session “Faces Across Space and Time: Portraiture and Intermediality in Europe and East Asia,” Association for Art History Annual Conference, London (online), April 2022.
“Framing Matisse in the US: Showing, Collecting, Dispersing, Consolidating,” in “Crossing Borders, Constructing Canons: ‘Post-Impressionism’ in Britain, America and Beyond,” Courtauld Institute of Art Research Forum, London (online), June 2021.
“Shchukin as Incubator: Decoration and Patronage,” in “Sergei Shchukin: Biography of a Collection,” Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, Russia, September 2019.
“Sacred Shoebox: Matisse’s Vence Chapel,” the 2018 Marie-Eugénie Milleret Lecture, Assumption College, Worcester, MA, March 2018.
Respondent in session “Conflict as Cultural Catalyst in Britain,” sponsored by Historians of British Art, College Art Association Annual Meeting, New York, February 2017.
“Ultimate Method or Ultimate Materials?” in “Looking at Matisse Now: A Symposium,” The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, October 2016.
“Ranking Decoration,” in session “The Rank of Art,” 34th International Congress of the History of Art, Beijing, China, September 2016.
“Triumph and Disaster of Collaboration: Henri Matisse and the Gobelins, 1946-49,” in conference “L’invention partagée/Shared Invention,” Aubusson, France, April 2016.
“Design in Art History Teaching and Research,” in panel on modern design in conjunction with invited lecture by Kristina Wilson, Program in American Culture Studies, Washington University, February 2016.
“Did Henri Matisse Really Understand Chinese Art?” invited conference paper for the 12th annual Beijing Forum, inaugural session on Art History, “The Diversity of Art History,” Beijing, China, November 2015.
“Site-Specific but Never Mind That: Matisse’s Lasker and Brody Commissions,” conference in conjunction with the exhibition Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, November 2014.
Interview on Matisse's paper cut-outs with Tyler Green for the podcast Modern Art Notes, in conjunction with the exhibition Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, October 2014. Web address: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-modern-art-notes-podcast/id47981...
“Matisse’s Decoration as Postwar Remedy,” Middlebury College, Vermont, April 2014; also delivered at Texas Tech University, Lubbock, April 2013.
“Is Matisse’s Bathers with a Turtle a Cubist Painting?” Midwest Art History Society session, College Art Association Annual Meeting, Chicago, February 2014.
“Still Life in Wartime Paris,” in panel “Committed Culture: Politics and Aesthetics During WWII,” in conjunction with exhibitions at the Kemper Art Museum, Washington University, March 2013.
“Object or Design? Originality in Matisse’s Paper Cut-Outs,” in session “The Object Transformed by the Art Market,” 33rd International Congress of the History of Art, Nuremberg, Germany, July 2012.
“Repetition/Series/Abstraction: Monet and His Legacies,” Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, Spain, May 2010.
“Soulages et l’exceptionnalisme américain” (Soulages and American Exceptionalism), in conference “Pierre Soulages,” Centre Georges Pompidou and Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art, Paris, January 2010.
