Advisor: Gordon Hughes

Dissertation Title: Perfecting Terror: Jean Fautrier, Asger Jorn, and the Appeal to Everyday Language in Postwar French Painting

Henry McMahon is a Ph.D candidate in the history of modern art with a focus on interwar and postwar French painting. His dissertation, "Perfecting Terror: Jean Paulhan and modernist painting in postwar France," reexamines the role of graphic commonplaces in the work of Jean Dubuffet, Jean Fautrier, and Asger Jorn, painters widely considered to have begun painting anew in the aftermath of World War II. Henry has served as a Fellow at the Menil Collection and in various Teaching Assistant and Research Assistant roles at Rice. In 2023 he began teaching the history of modern art at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where he will continue to teach during the 2024-25 academic year. In addition to projects related to his dissertation he is also developing articles on nineteenth-century American topics.