John Coplans

John Coplans (London, 1920 – 2003) was a British artist, art writer, curator and museum director. A veteran of the Second World War, he emigrated to the United States in 1960 and is remembered above all for his black and white photographs of his own aging body, an unusual approach that questioned the taboo surrounding old age.

After the war, in which he served in East Africa and Burma, he tried to establish himself as an abstract painter influenced by tachism and Abstract Expressionism, before turning to criticism. In 1962 he was one of the founders of Artforum, whose square format is attributed to him, and he served as editor-in-chief from 1971 to 1976, a period of wide editorial openness.

As a curator at the Pasadena Art Museum he championed Pop Art and West Coast artists such as Judy Chicago and James Turrell. In 1981 he returned to painting, but soon devoted himself to photography: from 1984 he made partial self-portraits without faces, which placed him at the centre of a reflection on the passing of time.