Dr Gregory Salter

Photograph of Dr Gregory Salter

Department of Art History, Curating and Visual Studies
Associate Professor in History of Art

Contact details

Address
G23g, The Barber Institute of Fine Art
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

I am a specialist in British art after 1945. My research to date has focused on home and masculinity in this period, and I am currently researching a transnational history of art from Britain, 1957-88.

Qualifications

  • PhD University of East Anglia
  • MA Courtauld Institute of Art
  • BA University of Aberdeen

Biography

I have been Lecturer in Art History at Birmingham since 2016. Before that, I completed a PhD at the University of East Anglia in 2013, took on a post-doctoral role at the Geffrye Museum of the Home in London between 2013 and 2015, and taught at the Queen Mary, University of London, the Courtauld Institute of Art, Birkbeck, University of London, and CAPA: the Global Education Network. I am originally from Middlesbrough, and attended a state comprehensive school before going to university.

Teaching

BA History of Art:

  • Contemporary Art And Masculinity
  • Contemporary Art And Home
  • Post-War: Art In Britain After The Second World War
  • Team-taught modules across the undergraduate programme

MA History of Art and MA Art History And Curating

  • I contribute to modules on the British Art Pathway
  • Criticism And Methods in The History Of Art

 

I also contribute to team-taught modules on the MRes Sexuality And Gender Studies.

Postgraduate supervision

Gregory Salter's research to date has focused on art from Britain since 1945, focusing particularly on histories of gender, sexuality, migrations, and home / the domestic across this period.

Dr Salter welcomes enquiries from prospective postgraduate students hoping to undertake research relating to his research and teaching interests.


Find out more - our PhD History of Art  page has information about doctoral research at the University of Birmingham.

Research

I research art from Britain since 1945, focusing particularly on histories of gender, sexuality, migration, and home / the domestic across this period.

My current research project is a transnational history of art from Britain from 1957 and 1988 that explores how artists explored questions relating to gender, sexuality, and desire. From the publication of the Wolfenden Report in 1957 to the arrival of Section 28 in 1988, artworks were shaped by the experiences, languages, and metaphors of international migrations and decolonisation while simultaneously grappling with the shifting position of sexuality within the British nation itself. Drawing on artworks produced by David Hockney, David Medalla, Howard Hodgkin, Sunil Gupta, and Rotimi Fani-Kayode, this research considers art as a sphere where the form that sexual and desiring lives might take during these pivotal decades were interrogated and mapped in fundamentally transnational terms.

I published a book called Art And Masculinity in Post-War Britain: Reconstructing Home with Bloomsbury in November 2019. It traced how artists represented home and masculinities in the period of social and personal reconstruction after the Second World War in Britain. It considered home as an unstable entity at this historical moment, imbued with the optimism and hopes of post-war recovery while continuing to resonate with the memories and traumas of wartime. Artists examined in the book included John Bratby, Francis Bacon, Keith Vaughan, Francis Newton Souza, Victor Pasmore, and Gilbert & George. Case studies featured ranged from the nuclear family and the body, to the nation. Combined, they presented an argument that art enables an understanding of post-war reconstruction as a temporally unstable, long-term phenomenon which placed conceptions of home and masculinity at the heart of its aims. The research in this book helped to shape Barbican Art Gallery's exhibition Postwar Modern: New Art In Britain 1945-1965 in 2022.

I contributed an essay to the catalogue for the National Gallery, London's exhibition Lucian Freud: New Perspectives in 2022. You can watch a video based on this essay here.

Other activities

I am currently Research Lead for Art History, Curating and Visual Studies. I am also Personal Tutor to students across the Undergraduate programme.

Publications

Recent publications

Book

Salter, G 2019, Art and masculinity in post-war Britain: reconstructing home. Home, 1st edn, Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003084686

Article

Salter, G 2018, '“A Door of Hell”: thresholds, crisis, and morality in the art of Gilbert and George in the 1970s', British Art Studies, vol. August 2018 , no. 9, gsalter. https://doi.org/10.17658/issn.2058-5462/issue-09/gsalter

Salter, G 2017, 'Francis Bacon and Queer Intimacy in Post-War London', Visual Culture in Britain, vol. 18, no. 1, pp. 84-99 . https://doi.org/10.1080/14714787.2017.1302817

Salter, G 2015, 'Memories of Kinship in Keith Vaughan's Post-War Paintings', Art History, vol. 38, no. 3, pp. 536-561. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8365.12144

Chapter

Salter, G 2024, Francis Bacon in Tangier: Queer Beyond Britain. in A Pedrosa & L Cosendey (eds), Francis Bacon: The Beauty Of Meat. Museu de Arte de Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, pp. 80. <https://www.brownsbfs.co.uk/Product/Bacon-Francis/Francis-Bacon-The-Beauty-of-Meat/9786557770511>

Salter, G 2023, The Identi-Kit Man. in H Little (ed.), Derek Boshier: Reinventor. Lund Humphries, London, pp. 46-47. <https://www.lundhumphries.com/products/derek-boshier>

Salter, G 2022, Looking Queerly At Masculinity. in J Alison (ed.), Postwar Modern: New Art in Britain 1945-65. Prestel, London, pp. 49-53. <https://shop.barbican.org.uk/products/postwar-modern-catalogue?_pos=2&_sid=44e30f8ec&_ss=r>

Salter, G 2022, 'The Space Around The Figure'. in D Herrmann (ed.), Lucian Freud: New Perspectives. The National Gallery, London, pp. 171-179. <https://shop.nationalgallery.org.uk/lucian-freud-new-perspectives-1051097.html>

Salter, G 2021, David Hockney and Queer History in the 1960s. in H Little (ed.), David Hockney: Moving Focus. Tate Publishing, London, pp. 26-35. <https://shop.tate.org.uk/david-hockney-moving-focus/26315.html>

Salter, G 2020, David Hockney und die Queer History in den 1960er Jahren. in David Hockney die Tate zu Gast. Hirmer Verlag, Hamburg, pp. 26-37.

Salter, G 2018, Looking at Identity: Bacon, Souza, Freud. in E Crippa (ed.), All Too Human: Bacon, Freud, and a Century of Painting From Life. Tate Publishing, London, pp. 42-53.

Salter, G 2014, Cold War at home: John Bratby, the self and the nuclear threat . in C Jolivette (ed.), British Art In The Nuclear Age. Ashgate, Farnham, pp. 151-170. <https://www.routledge.com/British-Art-in-the-Nuclear-Age/Jolivette/p/book/9781472412768>

View all publications in research portal