Randall K. Van Schepen

Currently an Associate Professor of Art and Architectural History in the Cummings School of Architecture, Randall K. Van Schepen teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in modern art, the history of photography, American art, Art and Architectural Historiography, contemporary art as well as on the Bauhaus. Professor Van Schepen has functioned as the DIrector of the Art and Architectural History program and has led university initiatives in general education.

Professor Van Schepen enjoys teaching students the complete range of courses in Art and Architectural History. The surveys of art and architectural history (AAH 121/122) allows him the privilege of introducing students to the greatest works of architecture and art of all time. More advanced courses create opportunities to focus on interesting particular concepts, historical circumstances and people who have compelling relations to the works of their time. Professor Van Schepen can sometimes be found in Maine cooking pizzas a wood-fired oven at the "camp" (cabin) he renovated using the Japanese "shou sugi ban" technique.

Research Overview

Professor Van Schepen's scholarship entails frequent participation in international conferences on a variety of topics that relate to his research interests such as the relationship of art and photography, the use of everyday objects in works of art, the representation of death, memorials and memory in art and architecture, and the nature of abstraction in modern and contemporary art and architecture. His publications include book chapters and essays on Walter Benjamin's "aura", Illya Kabakov and trash, the idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk, Friedrich Schiller and Aesthetic Redemption, Eric Fischl and 9/11, Gerhard RIchter's paintings, the use of fog in art and architecture, and numerous other topics.

About Randall K. Van Schepen

Randall K. Van Schepen is an Art and Architectural Historian who received his Master’s in Art Criticism and History from Stony Brook University studying under Donald Kuspit and then went on to receive a Ph.D. in Art History at the University of Minnesota, where he studied modern and contemporary European and American art and architecture. Before coming to Roger Williams, Van Schepen taught undergraduate and graduate courses at Rice University, The University of Minnesota, The University of Wisconsin-Stout, St. Olaf College, Bethel University, and the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Van Schepen researches and teaches the Modern and Contemporary periods of art and architecture. His dissertation, entitled American-Type Formalism: The Art Criticism of Alfred Barr, Clement Greenberg, and Michael Fried, traced the intellectual sources of modernist art criticism, particularly in America and as evident in the writing and curatorial work of these three historian/curators/critics. His ongoing research in this area covers the dominant critical discourses in the middle third of the twentieth century. An interest in aesthetic theory and philosophy leads him to connects this modernist artistic discourse to its intellectual sources in German Idealist philosophy as well as to late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century figures such as Conrad Fiedler, Heinrich Wölfflin and Roger Fry. Published essays and book chapters on Clement Greenberg, Michael Fried, Friedrich Schiller, the spiritual roots of aesthetic philosophy, as well as essays on alternative critical voices, such as Leo Steinberg drawn from this field of study.

In addition, Van Schepen’s interest in contemporary critical discourse also leads him to engage with more recent artistic production. He has published essays and book chapters on conceptual themes such as death as a subject in art, memorials and memory, trash as art, and the use of archaic technologies in contemporary photography. The essays address the work of contemporary artists such as Ilya Kabakov, Eric Fischl, Jeffrey Silverthorne, Gerhard Richter, Lyle Ashton Harris, Sherrie Levine, Adam Fuss and Alison Rossiter. His work is also widely presented in multi-disciplinary scholarly conferences across the United States and Europe, including forums in Dublin, the Netherlands, Leeds, London, Krakow, Chicago, and New York.

Van Schepen currently serves as the Director of the Art and Architectural History program at Roger Williams University.

Publications (Selected)

“Reconsidering the ‘Total’ Work of Art: Kabakov’s ‘total’ installation” The Avant-Garde and Total Art: The Gesamtkunstwerk Re-worked (provisional title), UK University of Leuven, forthcoming in 2025/2026.

Submission: “Ilya Kabakov’s Re(f)use: The Redemption of Matter,” Sculpture journal special issue on Fragility and Recalcitrance: Reuse in Sculptural Practices from Antiquity to Now, 2025.

“Avant-Garde and Contemporary Retro-Photography,” in The Avant-Garde: Aesthetic Strategies and Participatory Art (Jagiellonian University Press, forthcoming in 2022).

“Contemporary Misticism: Recovering Sensible Aesthetics in an Age of Digital Production,” Religions (2019).

“Gerhard Richter’s Critical Artistic Strategies: Politics, Terrorism and War,” Messages, Sages and Ages (2017).

“200 Years of Schiller’s Aesthetic Modernism: Criticism, Abstraction and Revolution,” in Aesthetics and Modernity (Bern: Peter Lang, 2012).

“Dialectic and Selfhood in Donald Kuspit’s Criticism,” in Dialectical Conversions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011).

“The Heroic ‘Garbage Man’: Trash in Ilya Kabakov’s The Man Who Never Threw Anything Away,” in Trash Culture: Objects and Obsolescence in Cultural Perspective (Bern: Peter Lang, 2010).

“Falling/Failing 9/11: Eric Fischl’s Tumbling Woman Debacle,” Aurora: The Journal of the History of Art (2008).

“From the Form of Spirit to the Spirit of Form,” in Re-Enchantment (London: Routledge, 2008).