Office: Dodd 247E
Phone: 310-206-5434
gbaker@humnet.ucla.edu

George Baker completed his undergraduate work in art history at Yale University and received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 2001. He arrives at UCLA as assistant professor of art history, having taught previously at SUNY Purchase where he was affiliated with the MFA program and directed the graduate art history program in Modern and Contemporary Art, Criticism, and Theory. Professor Baker's research and teaching explores the critical lessons of modernism for current cultural problems and phenomena, focusing thereby on the European avant-gardes of the early twentieth-century, as well as contemporary art, film, and the history and theory of photography. He has a special interest in psychoanalytic theory. His publications include a monograph on the films of conceptual artist James Coleman ("James Coleman: Drei Filmarbeiten," Sprengel Museum, Germany, 2002), an edited anthology of criticism on Coleman's work (MIT Press, 2003), and he is currently at work on two further books: a revisionist history of Dada entitled "The Artwork Caught by the Tail: Francis Picabia and Dada in Paris," as well as a collection of essays on contemporary art to be entitled "Reanimations." A long-standing critic for Artforum magazine, Professor Baker is also an editor of OCTOBER Magazine and OCTOBER Books.