Artforum's Founding Editor, Philip Leider, Passes Away at 96

Philip Leider, the founding editor in chief of Artforum, died at his home in Berkeley, California, on January 11. He was ninety-six. His death was confirmed by his daughter Polly Leider. Taking the helm of the magazine from its inception in 1962, Leider made it his mission to separate the world of art from the world of commerce. Under his leadership, Artforum quickly became the most influential and widely respected art publication in the country. “More than any other voice or venue, Artforum substantiated the break in American culture in the late ’60s,” wrote Richard Serra in a 1993 issue of the magazine. “And it was largely thanks to Phil Leider.” Philip Leider was born in New York City in 1929, the son of Jewish immigrants. He received a BA in history from Brooklyn College and an an MA in English Literature from the University of Nebraska, earning his way through school by writing papers for others at a few dollars a pop. Following a stint in the army as a typist, he entered law school but dropped out, moving his young family to San Francisco to get away from what he described as the “dangerous” streets of New York. In 1962, while employed as a social worker in the San Francisco welfare department, Leider was hired as Artforum’s only paid staffer by the magazine’s founder, John Irwin, on the advice of artist and fellow founding editor John Coplans, who had met Leider when the latter briefly ran a gallery showing Coplans’s paintings. Leider wasted no time in articulating his ethos, one that would come to permeate Artforum. “Art and artists will flourish when an admiring public buys paintings because they love them,” he wrote in the magazine’s inaugural issue. “If the myth that buying art is a good investment (in the Wall Street sense) is perpetuated, the result can only be disaster for both.” “Leider was an amazing fast study. It seemed he could catch up virtually overnight with any art issue new to him,” wrote art historian Walter Hopps in 1993. Leider was an early and ardent supporter of Andy Warhol, as well as a foundational champion of Land art. Brilliant himself, Leider was also quick to spot keen intellect in others. “Irwin wanted the magazine to be a financial success, so he wanted to publish the leading critics of the day, the people at the Timeses of Los Angeles and New York—the very people we were obsessed with not using,” Coplans wrote in 1993. “I was convinced that Artforum should be a new magazine, run with the new art, and find new writers. Phil went all the way with this.” Through the magazine, Leider fostered the starry careers of such renowned critics as Michael Fried, Max Kozloff, Rosalind Krauss, Annette Michelson, Robert Pincus-Witten, Barbara Rose, and Sidney Tillim. Despite his elevated position and Artforum’s increasing sway, “he wanted nothing to do with power or money,” wrote Janet Malcolm in a 1986 New Yorker article, describing Leider’s clash with publisher Charles Cowles, who took over the magazine in 1965 when Irwin ran out of cash. “The whole orientation of his life was his family.” Leider remained with the magazine through its move to Los Angeles that same year and its 1967 move to New York. He contributed dozens of articles and reviews to the publication, culminating in his long-form 1970 article “How I Spent My Summer Vacation,” a gonzo-style recounting of a road trip to see earth works including Michael Heizer’s Double Negative and Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty. Leider resigned in 1971, when the magazine was arguably at the peak of its influence. “There was a scene happening, unexpected, unpredictable and unpredicted, but there and real,” he told journalist Amy Newman in 2000. “The scene was the emergence of a coherent group of very, very good artists at the core of which were [Robert] Smithson, [Richard] Serra, [Michael] Heizer, [Alan] Saret, [Keith] Sonnier. They were connected with something new in film—Michael Snow—and something new in music—Philip Glass. It was very exciting, and I couldn’t get any of the writers I cared about to get interested in it. So I picked up my marbles, like a little kid.” On departing Artforum, Leider also left New York and publishing for California and a life in academia, teaching art history at the University of California, Irvine. In 1989, he moved to Jerusalem, where he became a full-time professor at the Bezalel Academy of Fine Arts. He retired in 1998 but continued contributing to major US art magazines, as well as Hebrew publications, spending his final years in Berkeley with his wife, Gladys. She survives him, as do three children, seven grandchildren, and one great-grandchild. “Phil Leider was a charming, funny, brilliant man, and there would be no Artforum without him,” said Fried on learning of Leider’s death. “He was a creative editor, had a sure instinct for what was important, and wrote major critical essays. No one could have supported their writers with more energy and intelligence. Anyone associated with Artforum during those glory days of the 1960s and ’70s is forever in his debt.”