Jan Tumlir: “The Magic Circle. On The Beatles, Pop Art, Art-Rock and Records”

Febraury 29, 2019 at the home of Christopher Michlig & Wendy Heldmann due to a snow storm which closed the city of Eugene 

Los Angeles based art writer and curator Jan Tumlir read from his book “The Magic Circle. On The Beatles, Pop Art, Art-Rock and Records.” Charting a pathway of historical analysis and speculative association outward from The Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” “The Magic Circle” is a meditation on the form of the concept album as a point of convergence between the worlds of rock and art, as well as an experiment in conflating the critical methodologies appropriate to either side.

Jan Tumlir is an art-writer and teacher based in Los Angeles. He is a founding editor of the local art journal X-TRA, and a regular contributor to Artforum. He has written catalog essays for such artists as Bas Jan Ader, Uta Barth, John Divola, Cyprien Gaillard, Allen Ruppersberg and James Welling. Books include: LA Artland, a survey of contemporary art in Los Angeles co-written with Chris Kraus and Jane McFadden, published by Black Dog Press in 2005; Hyenas Are…, a monograph on the work of Matthew Brannon, published by Mousse in 2011; and The Magic Circle: On The Beatles, Pop Art, Art-Rock and Records, published by Onomatopee in 2015. In addition to serving as an MFA advisor at Art Center College of Design, Tumlir is a visiting professor at University of California in Riverside, and at Washington University in St. Louis.