A passion for unloving art
Growing up in Melbourne, Australia, Maria Gough never imagined she would become a leading authority on Russian and Soviet avant-garde art. Gough, the Joseph Pulitzer Jr. Professor of Modern Art at Harvard, dubs the difficult, abstract field that she studies as “unloving” because “it seems at first to push you away, and you have to follow it.” After graduating from high school, Gough dreamed of becoming a sculptor. But when she was accepted into the University of Melbourne Law School, she decided to enroll there, partly for family reasons but also to satisfy an equally strong draw toward the realm of the analytical. She was permitted to take some liberal arts courses, which she took advantage of to study philosophy and art history. “Gradually, I just moved more and more into art history, such that I didn’t ever formally drop out of the law school; I just stopped taking classes in it,” she...