My friend Suzi Gablik, who has died aged 87, was an artist and pioneering writer on art who argued from the mid-1980s that the arts needed to turn away from modernism and recognise again the ecological and social function of art. Her writing had a profound impact on the evolution of a vast array of artists, arts collectives, thinkers and ecological activists.
Born in New York, Suzi was the only child of Anthony Gablik, a commercial artist, and Geraldine (nee Schwartz). She attended PS9 school in Manhattan, New York City, then Black Mountain College in North Carolina, a radical arts institution where she found what she called “my people”.
Aged 18 she moved on to Hunter Art College, New York, to study art – including painting under Robert Motherwell – and English, graduating in 1955. She then lived in the Upper East Side, Manhattan, making ends meet as an artist, before a fire in a warehouse where her belongings were stored led to an insurance cheque that enabled her to travel to Europe in 1959.
Through René Magritte’s lawyer in New York, Suzi began a correspondence with the Belgian artist, of whom she was intent upon writing a biography. She subsequently lived with René and Georgette Magritte in Brussels for a year, gathering material for her book Magritte, which was eventually published in 1973.
Returning to New York, she thrived in the late 1950s and early 60s art scene, exhibiting her collages that celebrated the richness of the natural world.
In 1966, Suzi moved to London, where she worked as a critic for two magazines, Art in America and ARTNews, and began a relationship with John Russell, then an art critic for the Sunday Times. In 1969, she and Russell curated an exhibition, Pop Art Redefined, at the newly opened Hayward Gallery, writing an accompanying book.
In the mid-70s, from her base in Marylebone, Suzi took on lecturing work for the United States Information Agency, which sent her around the world to speak about contemporary American art. The experience of lecturing on modernism, and recognising its part in colonialism, catalysed her sense that the movement had arrived at a dead end.
This shift of thinking underpinned her book Has Modernism Failed? (1984). The work’s heretical views made Suzi many enemies in the art world, but also a swathe of allies.
Written in Suzi’s clear and direct style, the book later influenced the idea of “social practice” art, which focuses on engagement through human interaction and social discourse. Her reputation was further enhanced with The Re-enchantment of Art, published in 1991, the year she ended her 25-year sojourn in London to settle in Blacksburg, Virginia.
In 1995, Conversations Before the End of Time explored ecological and social themes of art through a series of exchanges with artists and thinkers. Her final book was Living the Magical Life: An Oracular Adventure (2002), in which she explored through autobiography the idea of divination and chance guiding ourselves through life.
Suzi is survived by her cousin, Eugene.
