Jonathan Crary

{{short description|American art critic}} {{Infobox writer  | name = Jonathan Crary | image =  | caption = Jonathan Crary | pseudonym = | birth_name = Jonathan Crary | birth_date = | birth_place = | death_date = | occupation = Writer, art critic | nationality = | ethnicity = | period = | subject = | movement = | spouse = | signature = | website = | education = Columbia University (BA, PhD)<br>San Francisco Art Institute (BFA) | awards = Guggenheim Fellowship (1991) }}

'''Jonathan Crary''' is an American art critic and essayist.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Jonathan Crary |url=https://novembermag.com/content/jonathan-crary |access-date=2026-03-10 |website=November |language=en}}</ref> He is the Meyer Schapiro Professor of Modern Art and Theory at Columbia University.<ref name=":0" /> His first notable works were ''Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the 19th Century'' (1990), and ''Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle, and Modern Culture'' (2000).<ref name=":0" /> He has published critical essays for more than 30 exhibition catalogues.<ref name=":0" /> A dominant analytical theme in his work is the history of vision, observation and perception.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Chamois |first=Camille |last2=Lipuma |first2=Viviana |date=2025-10-10 |title=The eye of capital. Jonathan Crary and the history of attention |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1472586X.2025.2563817 |journal=Visual Studies |language=en |pages=1–15 |doi=10.1080/1472586X.2025.2563817 |issn=1472-586X|url-access=subscription }}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Phillips |first=David |date=1993 |editor-last=Crary |editor-first=Jonathan |title=Modern Vision |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/1360541 |journal=Oxford Art Journal |volume=16 |issue=1 |pages=129–138 |issn=0142-6540}}</ref>

==Education== Crary attended high school at the Putney School in Vermont.{{Citation needed|date=March 2026}} He graduated from Columbia College, where he was an art history major.<ref name=":0" /> In 1987, he received his Ph.D. from Columbia University.<ref name=":0" /> Crary also earned a B.F.A. from the San Francisco Art Institute, where he studied film and photography.<ref name=":0" />

== Teaching == He first taught in the Visual Arts Department at the University of California, San Diego.<ref name=":0" /> In 1989, he began teaching at Columbia University full-time.<ref name=":0" /> He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1991.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Jonathan K. Crary |url=https://www.gf.org/fellows/jonathan-k-crary |access-date=2026-03-10 |website=Guggenheim Fellowship}}</ref>

==Writing== Crary's ''24/7: Late Capitalism and the End of Sleep'' explores the nonstop pace of the modern world and its effects on human psychology and physiology, with an emphasis on sleep patterns.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Lezard |first=Nicholas |author-link=Nicholas Lezard |date=2014-07-22 |title=24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep by Jonathan Crary – review |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jul/22/24-7-late-capitalism-ends-sleep-jonathan-crary-review |access-date=2026-03-10 |work=The Guardian |language=en-GB |issn=0261-3077}}</ref>

His ''Suspensions of Perception'' focuses on the period from about 1880 to 1905, in which Crary describes the emergence of subjective vision.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Brooks |first=Jodi |date=2014-12-23 |title=Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle, and Modern Culture |url=https://www.screeningthepast.com/issue-11-reviews/suspensions-of-perception-attention-spectacle-and-modern-culture%c2%a0/ |access-date=2026-03-10 |website=Screening the Past |language=en-US}}</ref> He also discusses how attention became a "new object within the modernization of subjectivity".<ref>{{cite book|last=Crary|first=Jonathan|title=Suspensions of perception: attention, spectacle, and modern culture|year=2001|publisher=MIT Press|location=Cambridge|isbn=0-262-53199-2|edition=}}</ref> The book examines how the perceptions of various cultures were reconstructed. This new development of vision created controversy because it implied that seeing depended upon one's subjective thoughts. Therefore, this new way of seeing was thought of as unclear, unreliable, and always questioned by a large population of people.{{Citation needed|date=March 2026}} ''Suspensions of Perception'' was published in 2000 and won the 2001 Lionel Trilling Book Award.<ref name=":0">{{Cite web |title=Jonathan Crary |url=https://arthistory.columbia.edu/content/jonathan-crary |access-date=2026-03-10 |website=Department of Art History & Archaeology {{!}} Columbia University}}</ref>

Crary's ''Techniques of the Observer'' is a study of the origins of modern visual culture.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Katz |first=Barry |date=January 1992 |title=''Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century'' by Jonathan Crary |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/888380 |journal=Technology and Culture |language=en |volume=33 |issue=1 |pages=206–207 |doi=10.1353/tech.1992.0190 |issn=1097-3729|url-access=subscription }}</ref> It was published in 1990 and translated into 12 languages.<ref>{{Cite web |title=TMS & Modernist Forum: Jonathan Crary |url=https://english.yale.edu/event/tms-modernist-forum-jonathan-crary |access-date=2026-03-10 |website=English |publisher=Yale University}}</ref>

Crary has written on art and culture for publications including ''Art in America'', ''Artforum'', ''October'', ''Assemblage'', ''Cahiers du Cinéma'', ''Film Comment'', ''Grey Room'', ''Domus'', and ''The Village Voice''.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Jonathan Crary |url=https://sofheyman.org/persons/jonathan-crary |access-date=2023-08-21 |website=SOF/Heyman |language=en |archive-date=2023-08-21 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230821050646/https://sofheyman.org/persons/jonathan-crary |url-status=live }}</ref> He has also written critical essays for more than 30 exhibition catalogs.<ref name=":0" /> Crary contributed to the 7th edition of the anthology ''Film Theory and Criticism'' anthology.<ref name=":0" />

In 1986, Crary was one of the founders of Zone Books, a press known for publications in history, art theory, politics, anthropology, and philosophy.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Jonathan K. Crary |url=https://comparativemedia.columbia.edu/faculty/jonathan-k-crary |access-date=2023-08-21 |website=Center for Comparative Media {{!}} Columbia University |archive-date=2023-08-21 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230821050648/https://comparativemedia.columbia.edu/faculty/jonathan-k-crary |url-status=live }}</ref> He co-edited the 1992 volume ''Incorporations'' (Zone Books).<ref>{{Cite web |date=1992-10-01 |title=ZONE 6: Incorporations |url=https://www.zonebooks.org/books/124-zone-6-incorporations |access-date=2026-03-10 |website=Zone Books |language=en}}</ref> Crary remains a co-editor at Zone Books.<ref>{{Cite web |title=About |url=https://www.zonebooks.org/about |access-date=2026-03-10 |website=Zone Books |language=en}}</ref>

==Bibliography==

* {{Cite book |last=Crary |first=Jonathan |title=Scorched earth: beyond the digital age to a post-capitalist world |date=2022 |publisher=Verso |isbn=978-1-78478-444-7 |location=}} * {{Cite book |last=Crary |first=Jonathan |title=24/7: late capitalism and the ends of sleep |date=2013 |publisher=Verso |isbn=978-1-78168-093-3}} * {{Cite book |last=Crary |first=Jonathan |title=Suspensions of perception: attention, spectacle, and modern culture |date=1999 |publisher=MIT Press |isbn=978-0-585-27082-1 |series=October Books}} * {{Cite book |title=Incorporations |date=1992 |publisher=Zone |isbn=978-0-942299-29-8 |editor-last=Crary |editor-first=Jonathan |series= |location=New York |editor-last2=Kwinter |editor-first2=Sanford |editor-link2=Sanford Kwinter}} * {{Cite book |last=Crary |first=Jonathan |title=Techniques of the observer: on vision and modernity in the nineteenth century |date=1990 |publisher=MIT Press |isbn=978-0-262-03169-1}} * {{Cite book |last=Sternfeld |first=Joel |author-link=Joel Sternfeld |title=iDubai |last2=Crary |first2=Jonathan |date=2010 |publisher=Steidl |isbn=978-3-86521-916-9 |edition= |location=Göttingen}}

==Notes== {{Reflist}}

==References== * {{Cite book |last=Barth |first=Uta |title=The long now |date=2010 |publisher=Gregory R. Miller & Co. |isbn=978-0-9800242-4-1 |location=New York}} * {{Cite book |title=Robert Lehman Lectures on Contemporary Art #3 |date=2004 |publisher=Dia Art Foundation |isbn=978-0-944521-77-9 |location=New York}} * {{Cite book |title=Bridget Riley: Retrospective |date=2008 |publisher=Ridinghouse |isbn=978-1-905464-15-9 |location=London}} * {{Cite book |last=Lee |first=Ellen Wardwell |title=Seurat at Gravelines: the last landscapes |last2=Crary |first2=Jonathan |last3=Butler |first3=William M. |date=1990 |publisher=Indianapolis Museum of Art in cooperation with Indiana University Press |isbn=978-0-936260-56-3 |location=Indianapolis}} * {{Cite book |last=Crary |first=Jonathan |title=J. M. W. Turner: the sun is God |last2=Francis |first2=Mark |date=2000 |publisher=Tate Liverpool |isbn=978-1-85437-342-7 |location=}}

==External links== * [https://arthistory.columbia.edu/content/jonathan-crary Faculty page] at Columbia University

{{DEFAULTSORT:Crary, Jonathan}} Category:Living people Category:Columbia University faculty Category:Columbia College, Columbia University alumni Category:American art critics Category:San Francisco Art Institute alumni Category:The Putney School alumni Category:Year of birth missing (living people) Category:American philosophers of art Category:American philosophers of technology