Democracy Dies in Darkness

Calvin Tomkins, who narrated the rise of contemporary art, dies at 100

During a six-decade career at the New Yorker, Mr. Tomkins profiled scores of artists, including Marcel Duchamp, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns and Georgia O’Keeffe.

Writer Calvin Tomkins attends the 2011 Whitney Museum of American Art Gala at Hudson River Park's Pier 57 in New York City. (Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images)

Calvin Tomkins, whose New Yorker profiles of contemporary artists in the 1960s and ’70s revealed the avant garde painters, sculptors and installationists being ignored by classical critics and elevated them from gritty, obscure galleries in downtown New York City into the broader American culture, died March 20. He was 100.

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