Tomkins, Calvin, 1925-....

Calvin Tomkins was born December 17, 1925, in Orange, NJ. He received his undergraduate degree from Princeton University in 1948 and entered into a career in journalism, working first with Radio Free Europe from 1953 to 1957 and then, as a writer and editor, for Newsweek from 1957 to 1961. His first contributions to The New Yorker were published in 1958 and in 1961 he became a regular staff writer while only occasionally writing for other outlets. In 1980, in addition to continuing his longer pieces for the magazine, Tomkins was appointed the official art critic and wrote art reviews and other content on an almost weekly basis. That position terminated in 1986 but Tomkins continued as a staff writer at The New Yorker until the present.

Tomkins' initial contributions to The New Yorker were short humor pieces (now known under the rubric Shouts and Murmurs.) He contributed six of these pieces between 1958 and 1960 before publishing his first Profile, on Jean Tinguely, in 1962. Tomkins' career at the magazine coincided with a new burgeoning of talent in the New York art world and his first two decades of writing traced the origins and rise to establishment of Pop Art, Earth Art, Minimalism, Video Art, Happenings and Installation Art; as well as profiling the curators, collectors, and gallery owners who helped popularize those artists and movements. Tomkins continued publishing longer articles two or three times a year interspersed with light humor pieces, The Talk of the Town articles and other shorter pieces, through 1980, when he became official art critic for the magazine.

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