Thomas Lawson.

About Thomas Lawson

Thomas Lawson is an artist, writer, editor, and from 1991 to 2022 was the Dean of the School of Art & Design at California Institute of the Arts. He emerged as a central figure in ideological debates at the turn of the 1980s about the viability of painting through critical essays, such as "Last Exit: Painting" (1981). He has been described as "an embedded correspondent [and] polemical editorialist" who articulated an oppositional, progressive position for representational painting from within an increasingly reactionary art and media environment. Artforum called his approach to the medium "one of the most cogent and controversial" in the 80s.