Julian Nykolak is Associate Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History. He received his PhD from the Graduate Program in Visual and Cultural Studies at the University of Rochester and his BA from Wesleyan University. His research illuminates the significance of collective artistic formations to rethink theories of the avant-garde and histories of identity, difference, and relationality in twentieth-century art. A specialist in postwar European and American art, he teaches widely in modern and contemporary art history.
“Against the Wall,” in Ulrike Müller: Monument to My Paper Body (Aachen: Ludwig Forum, 2025)
"Party Formalism: Formlessness and Collective Form in Contemporary Art," in Model Collapse: Contemporary European Art at a Time of Democratic Crisis, ed. Lindsay Caplan and Kerry Greaves (Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 2025).
"Supports/Surfaces, Scission, and the Structure of the Avant-Garde," Art History 43, no. 1 (February 2020): 94-119.
"On Moving and Touching: From Kineticism to Dance in the Museum," Art Journal 78, no. 4 (Winter 2019): 38-57.
"Painting with Desire: Color and Collectivity, 1972-1974," Selva 1, special issue, "Painting after 1968" (October 2019): 29-62.
Various catalog entries in Outliers and American Vanguard Art, ed. Lynne Cooke (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 2018).
"A Blueprint for Utopia," in Luc Tuymans: Intolerance (Antwerp: Ludion, 2015), 68-72.