John O'Brian

The Bomb in the Wilderness contends that photography is one of the primary ways, if not the primary way, nuclear activities are interpreted and remembered. The book asks: Do photographs alert viewers to nuclear threat, numb them to its dangers, or do both at the same time? O’Brian argues that the impact and global reach of Canada’s nuclear programs have been felt ever since the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The book has been referred to as a “foundational text.”[11]  Douglas Coupland writes, “It finds beauty in grotesque places [and] validates the reader’s Cold War paranoia.”[12]

Guest curated by O'Brian for the Art Gallery of Ontario in 2015, Camera Atomica was "the first substantial exhibition of nuclear photography to encompass the entire postwar period from the bombings of Hiroshima in 1945 to the triple meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi in 2011."[13] The exhibition included over 200 works ranging from photographs taken by the United States government of atomic bomb tests to images of anti-nuclear protests on the streets of Toronto, to images by artists, to photos of the utilization of nuclear technology in medicine.[13] In addition to addressing key issues in the nuclear era, Camera Atomica aimed to make visible the interconnections between nuclear technology and the photographic medium. One critic concluded that going to the show was “a civic duty.”[14] Peter Galison wrote that "this remarkable show and catalogue promise to make clear that the age of the nucleus is also and always an age of the image."[15]

Matisse was an emblematic figure in twentieth-century art, perhaps the emblem of an artist whose work is predicated on the sensual pleasures of looking. This study investigates how the artist and his work were received in America until his death in 1954. To promote his work, Matisse tried to show the media that whatever his reputation as an avant-gardist the conduct of his life was solidly bourgeois. He collaborated closely with museums exhibiting his work, cultivated private collectors, and played off dealers against each other. The book “casts a great deal of light on the way in which a picture becomes valuable… Patronage is as much a romance as a business transaction.”[16]

The four volumes of Clement Greenberg: The Collected Essays and Criticism have generated international interest and debate.[17] The first two volumes appeared in 1986, the second two in 1993. In an editorial written for The New Criterion, Hilton Kramer expressed admiration for Greenberg's criticism but distaste for O'Brian's politicization of it.[18] Following a 2009 symposium at Harvard University on Greenberg, Jeff Nguyen wrote:

“The symposium kicked off with a roundtable discussion featuring experts on Greenberg’s art criticism: Yve-Alain Bois (heavyweight in 20th century European and American art), Thierry de Duve (specialist in the metaphysics of art, made Duchamp difficult), Serge Guilbaut (specialist in art and politics during the Cold War), Rosalind Krauss (foremost champion of Greenberg, turned defector), John O’Brian (editor of the Collected Essays and Criticism). Benjamin Buchloch was the moderator. Holy Critics! How many more rock stars can you cram into a room? The only person missing from this esteemed company was Michael Fried. The University of British Columbia (Serge Guilbaut and John O’Brian) appears to be a happening place for art history.”[19]

• David Milne and the Modern Tradition of Painting. Toronto: Coach House Press, 1983.
• Degas to Matisse: The Maurice Wertheim Collection. New York and Cambridge, Mass.: Harry N. Abrams and Harvard University Art Museums, 1988.
• Clement Greenberg: The Collected Essays and Criticism. 4 vols. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986 and 1993.
• The Flat Side of the Landscape: The Emma Lake Artists' Workshops. Saskatoon: Mendel Art Gallery, 1989.
• Voices of Fire: Art, Rage, Power, and the State. Co-edited with Bruce Barber and Serge Guilbaut. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996.
• Ruthless Hedonism: The American Reception of Matisse. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.
• All Amazed: For Roy Kiyooka. Co-edited with Naomi Sawada and Scott Watson. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2002.
• Greenberg Variations. Portland, Oregon: The Back Room, 2007.
• Beyond Wilderness: The Group of Seven, Canadian Identity and Contemporary Art. Co-edited with Peter White. Montreal: McGill Queen's University Press, 2007.
• Atomic Postcards: Radioactive Messages from the Cold War. Co-written with Jeremy Borsos. Bristol, UK: Intellect Books, 2011.
• Strangelove's Weegee. Vancouver: Presentation House Gallery, 2013.
• Camera Atomica. Editor. London and Toronto: Black Dog Publishing and the Art Gallery of Ontario, 2015.
• Breathless Days, 1959–1960. Co-edited with Serge Guilbaut. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. 2017.
• The Bomb in the Wilderness: Photography and the Nuclear Era in Canada. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2020.
• Through Post-Atomic Eyes. Co-edited with Claudette Lauzon. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020.

• “Dead West: Mark Ruwedel and Sacrifice Zones,” Deutsche Borse Photography Prize (London: The Photographers Gallery, 2019), 118-119.
• “Motive for Metaphor,” David Milne: Modern Painting (London: Dulwich Picture Gallery, 2018), 161-163.
• “Clement Greenberg,” co-authored with Jessica Law and Jeff O’Brien, Oxford Bibliographies in Art History, 2016, www.oxfordbibliographies.com.
• "Landscape as Fordscape," in Picturing the Americas: Landscape Painting from Tierra del Fuego to the Arctic (Toronto and São Paulo: Art Gallery of Ontario and Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo/Yale University Press, 2015, ISBN 978-0-30021-150-4), 188–93. (Project)
• "The Bomb, the Group of Seven, and Douglas Coupland's G7 Series," in Douglas Coupland: Everywhere Is Anywhere Is Anything Is Everything (Vancouver and London: Vancouver Art Gallery and Black Dog, 2014), 69–71.
• "Morrice and Matisse: Bedfellows Under the Sign of Modernism," Morrice and Lyman in the Company of Matisse (Quebec: Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec, 2014), 113–135.
• "Sur le plateau de Docteur Folamour," in Errances Photographiques: Mobilité, Intermédialité, edited by Suzanne Paquet (Montreal: Presses de L‘Université de Montréal, 2014), 185–200.
• "On Photographing a Dirty Bomb," in The Cultural Work of Photography in Canada, edited by Carol Payne and Andrea Kunnard (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2011), 182–94.
• "Ishiuchi Miyako Interviewed by John O'Brian," in Hiroshima by Ishiuchi Miyako (Vancouver; UBC Museum of Anthropology, 2011).
• "Postcard to Moscow," in Postcards: Ephemeral Histories of Modernity, edited by Jordana Mendelson and David Proschaska (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010), 182–93, 222–24.
• "Amerika Dropt a Bomb on Nevada," Open Letter: A Canadian Journal of Writing and Theory 14, No. 4 (Fall 2010), 63–77.
• "Another Report on the Age of Extinction," Canadian Review of American Studies 38, No.1 (2008), 191–98.
• "The Nuclear Family of Man," Japan Focus: Asia Pacific Journal, July 2008. http://japanfocus.org/ (Re-published on The History News Network)
• "Bernard Smith's Early Marxist Art History," Thesis Eleven (Australia), No. 82 (August 2005), 29–37.
• "Anthem Lip-Sync," The Journal of Canadian Art History XXI/1 & 2 (2000), pp. 140–151.
• "Shining on the Modernist Parade: The American Sacralization of Matisse at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1948," Coloquio Internacional de Historia del Arte (Mexico City) 20, 1997, pp. 771–805.