Alessandra Comini is an American art historian and curator. She is University Distinguished Professor of Art History Emerita at Southern Methodist University. Proficient in music and languages as well as art history, Comini brought an interdisciplinary approach to her study of the arts in Austria and Germany at the turn of the 20th century, an approach particularly suited to the integrated art forms of fin-de-siècle Vienna.
Early and personal life
Alessandra Comini was born the daughter of Megan Laird and Raiberto Comini in Winona, Minnesota. Her earliest years were spent in Barcelona, Milan, and Dallas. Comini received her B.A. from Barnard College, her M.A, from the University of California, Berkeley, and her Ph.D. from Columbia University. Her dissertation, written under Theodore Reff, on the topic of Egon Schiele's portraiture. In 1974 she started working with art historian Eleanor Tufts at Southern Methodist University. Together they developed a shared feminist approaches toward art and made a shared home together in Dallas, as life partners. Tuft's died in 1991.
Career
While teaching at Columbia between 1965 and 1974, Comini became one of the founders of the Women's Caucus for Art in 1972. She taught at Southern Methodist University from 1974 until 2005. And she guest taught at the University of California, Berkeley and Yale University. Voted outstanding professor sixteen times by her students, Comini served as the Alfred Hodder Resident Humanist at Princeton University and was named Distinguished Visiting Lecturer at Oxford University's European Humanities Research Centre. Celebrated for her witty, erudite, and compelling public lectures, Comini has been in demand as a guest speaker nationally and internationally. As an interdisciplinary speaker, Comini lectured repeatedly at the Leipzig Gewandhaus symposia, The Santa Fe Opera, and for the Indianapolis and Dallas Symphony Orchestras. In 1990 Comini was awarded the Grand Decoration of Honour for Services to the Republic of Austria in recognition of her contributions to Germanic culture. In 2014 Comini turned to fiction writing and published six art history murder mystery novels in the Megan Crespi Series. The Neue Galerie Museum for German and Austrian Art, New York, commissioned Comini to curate its blockbuster exhibition Egon Schiele's Portraits.
Honors and awards
Comini's book Egon Schiele’s Portraits was nominated for a National Book Award and received the College Art Association's Charles Rufus Morey Book Award. Comini's book The Changing Image of Beethoven: A Study in Mythmaking was a pioneer application of reception history to imagery.
The Fantastic Art of Vienna, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1978.
"The Visual Brahms: Idols and Images," Arts Magazine, 1979
"The Age of Goethe Today: Of Plum Trees, Painters, Pianists, and Pamphleteers," Arts Magazine, 1988
The Changing Image of Beethoven: A Study in Mythmaking, New York, Rizzoli, 1987, new edition 2008, Santa Fe, Sunstone Press
"Gender or Genius? The Women Artists of German Expressionism," Feminism and Art History: Questioning the Litany, Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard, eds., New York, Harper & Row, 1982.
"Nordic Luminism and the Scandinavian Response to Impressionism," World Impressionism, Norma Broude, ed., New York, H. N. Abrams, 1990.
"Siegesallee und Salome," Kunst und Politik in den entscheidenden Jahren von Richard Strauss, Leipzig, Gewandhaus, 1991
"Kollwitz in Context: The Formative Years," Käthe Kollwitz, Elizabeth Prelinger, ed., New Haven, Yale University Press, 1992.
"Violetta And Her Sisters," Violetta And Her Sisters: The Lady of the Camellias, Responses to the Myth, Nicholas John, ed., London, Faber and Faber, 1994.
"Toys in Freud’s Attic," Picturing Children: Construction of Childhood between Rousseau and Freud, Marilyn Brown, ed., Burlington, VT, Ashgate, 2002.
In Passionate Pursuit—A Memoir, New York, George Braziller, Inc., 2004.
Egon Schiele: Portraits, Alessandra Comini ed., "Egon Schiele: Redefining Portraiture in the Age of Angst," Munich, Prestel, 2014.
"The Two Gustavs: Klimt, Mahler, and Vienna’s Golden Decade, 1887–1907," Naturlauf: Scholarly Journals toward Gustav Mahler, Essays in Honour of Henry-Louis de La Grange for His 90th Birthday, Paul-André, ed., New York, Peter Lang Publishing Inc., 2015.
Megan Crespi series
Killing for Klimt, Santa Fe, Sunstone Press, 2014.
The Schiele Slaughters, Santa Fe, Sunstone Press, 2015.
The Kokoschka Capers, Santa Fe, Sunstone Press, 2015.
The Munch Murders, Santa Fe, Sunstone Press, 2016.
The Kollwitz Calamities, Santa Fe, Sunstone Press, 2016.
The Kandinsky Conundrum, Santa Fe, Sunstone Press, 2018.
The Mahler Mayhem, Santa Fe, Sunstone Press, 2019.
