Craig Hancock received his B.F.A and M.A. from The University of California Berkley and his Ph.D from Vassar. He currently specializes in American and European post-minimalism. Craig was a Stanley Stetson visiting scholar at Northwestern University in 1992 and has received numerous grants and fellowships for his research, including an award from the J. Paul Getty Foundation. His book Dan Flavin: Intercontexutalities Suspended was nominated for the George Wittenborn Memorial Book Award in 1995 and he co-edited Marcel Duchamp: Art In The Age Of Mechanical Reproduction. He currently teaches at The University of Michigan and lives in Ann Arbor with his wife Marie and daughter Devin.
Craig Hancock was fond of saying “art saved his life.” It was a personal dramatic flourish he afforded himself on the first day of every Western Art After 1400 or whatever undergraduate bullshit seminar he taught at The University of Michigan. It was the kind of pithy statement that inspires awe in some 18 year olds, the same ones changing right before our eyes, the same ones who will not recognize themselves by the time they turn 22. But to be young is very heaven according to Wordsworth. How exactly art changed Craig Hancock’s life is a bit unclear. He said it was the first time he saw The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even in the Philadelphia Museum of Art that he knew he had to be an Art Historian. It helped that he couldn’t draw. Now, years later the mendacity of the statement was becoming apparent to Craig. Saying that “art saved his life” was really just a pathetic declamation in hopes of receiving a mild momentary energy return from a handful of students. It was this energy return, this feedback, this undivided attention, those lightbulbs going off inside heads that gave Craig Hancock the validation he constantly sought and rarely found.
Marie Hancock was cheating on Craig with one of his doctoral students. It started innocent enough at the departmental holiday party. OK, it wasn’t that innocent but that’s what Marie told her friends. Then came the text messages. Then meeting up for coffee. In another time there would have been love letters and gardenias before Marie and Stephen were fucking in the middle of the day on her lunch break in the admissions office. Craig knew but didn’t say anything. He recommend Stephen’s dissertation on James Turrell’s Roden Crater passable and found the paper much more fascinating then the affair.
Often the past appears to us as a distant universe, endless empty black minutes sprinkled with a few bright moments that last for eons. Craig Hancock’s dad teaching him how to drive always stood out like an iridium satellite on the clear summer night of his youth. A certain 1971 Ford Pinto circling in stop-starts between first and second gear in the Jefferson High School parking lot. John trying to explain to Craig how to clutch, brake, shift. Those first 30 torturous minutes of a steep and necessary learning curve. John taking the wheel and driving them unexpectedly to Denny’s. Craig ordering a grilled cheese, John ordering a coffee. John who had just lost his job. John who began to cry loudly in front of his teenage son. Craig who walked out the door leaving his dad scared and shattered. Craig who sliced the tire of the Pinto with his pocket knife and walked home alone. Funny how all sons eventually become their fathers. It was something Devin couldn’t understand.
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