Waldemar Januszczak | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 12 January 1954 |
| Occupation(s) | Art critic and television presenter |
Waldemar Januszczak (born 12 January 1954) is an English art critic and television documentary producer and presenter. Formerly the art critic of The Guardian, he took the same role at The Sunday Times in 1992, and has twice won the Critic of the Year award.
Januszczak was born in Basingstoke, Hampshire, to Polish refugees who had arrived in England after the Second World War.
In Poland his father had been a policeman in Sanok,[1] a job which included exposing Communists. In the UK he worked as a railway carriage cleaner, but died, aged 57, when a train ran over him at Basingstoke railway station. His widow, then aged 33, found work as a dairymaid. Waldemar was one year old at the time.[2]
The young Januszczak attended Divine Mercy College, a school for the children of Polish refugees which the Congregation of Marian Fathers had set up at Fawley Court, Henley-on-Thames. According to Januszczak in Holbein: Eye of the Tudors, he attended St Anne's (Roman Catholic) Primary School in Caversham, Berkshire, from ages 5 to 11.[3]
After studying history of art at the University of Manchester, Januszczak became an art critic, and then books editor, of The Guardian. In 1989 he was appointed head of arts at Channel 4 television. In the seven years he spent there he televised the Turner Prize for the first time and the Glastonbury Festival. He also started the controversial series J'Accuse, commissioned a celebrated final interview in 1994 with the playwright Dennis Potter by Melvyn Bragg, and started the music series The White Room.
In 1992 he became art critic for The Sunday Times. He has been voted Critic of the Year twice by the Press Association.[4]
Januszczak has been described as "a passionate art lover, art critic and writer. His presentation style is casual but informed, enthusiastic, evocative and humorous. He bumbles about on our TV screens, doing for art what David Attenborough has done for the natural world", and someone who acts out of "a refusal to present art as elitist in any way. He makes it utterly accessible and understandable."[5]
In 1997, he took part in a Channel 4 discussion called The Death of Painting, occasioned by the absence of painters from that year's Turner Prize. The programme was made famous when an apparently drunk Tracey Emin swore at the other participants and left after ten minutes.[6] In 2002, when insurance broker and art collector Ivan Massow lashed out at conceptual art in general and said that Emin could not "think her way out of a paper bag", Januszczak observed in a letter to The Independent that "thinking" would not be very helpful in those circumstances.[7]
In 2004 he differed from most critics in his defence of the art of Stella Vine, singling her out for praise in his otherwise hostile review of the Saatchi Gallery's New Blood show ("although I didn't much want to like Vine's contribution, I found I did. It had something."), and continuing to champion her, seeing "a combination of empathy and cynicism that can be startling."[8] Later that year he took part in a Christmas special critics edition of the television quiz show University Challenge.[9]
Reviewing the exhibition Americans in Paris at London's National Gallery in 2006, he described James McNeill Whistler's Symphony in White No 1 as "a clumsy bit of cake-making with thick smudges of white rubbed into the canvas in coarse, dry skid marks". "Even Whistler's renowned mother manages here to underwhelm", he complained. Hoaxed by artist Jamie Shovlin, Januszczak later that year 'revealed' in his paper how the 1970s glam rock band Lustfaust had "cocked a notorious snook at the music industry in the late 1970s by giving away their music on blank cassettes and getting their fans to design their own covers".[10] The band had never existed outside Shovlin's fiction.[11] Januszczak replied that Shovlin should be applauded for his capacity to remind us of the crucial place of the artist in today's society as he made clear that "Reality simply cannot be trusted any more".[12]
In October 2008, Januszczak co-curated a show at the British Museum called Statuephilia, in which modern sculptures by six artists were shown next to their more ancient counterparts. The show was inspired during his creation of the series The Sculpture Diaries, a three-part series on sculpture around the world, which was first aired on 31 August 2008 on Channel 4.
One of the original presenters of The Late Show on BBC 2, Waldemar Januszczak has made many appearances on television, presenting programmes on the history of art, and appearing on The Culture Show and Newsnight Review. Beginning on 27 November 2012, he presented a four-part series The Dark Ages: An Age of Light about the art and architecture of the Dark Ages on BBC Four.
In October 2019 he directed and narrated Handmade in Bolton on BBC Four, a short documentary series featuring Shaun Greenhalgh and fronted by Janina Ramirez.[13]
He currently produces content for the art channel Perspective, part of the Little Dot Studios Network (All3Media) and for Sky Arts.
Januszczak has been making films since 1997 with his production company ZCZ Films.
