John Yau

John Yau is a poet, art critic, fiction writer, and publisher whose recent books include Disguise the Limit: John Yau's Collaborations, Tell It Slant, and Genghis Chan on Drums. He founded Black Square Editions and cofonded the online magazine Hyperallergic Weekend. He has received awards and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, National Endowment of the Arts, and Academy of American Poets, among others.

An art critic who has been publishing art criticism since 1978, Yau is also a professor of critical studies at Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University. After writing for Art in America and Artforum, he served as the arts editor of The Brooklyn Rail from 2006 to 2011, and then began writing for Hyperallergic Weekend. He was the recipient of the 2018 Jackson Poetry Prize. In 2021, Yau was awarded the Rabkin Prize for excellence in visual arts journalism. His books of art criticism include In the Realm of Appearances: The Art of Andy Warhol and A Thing Among Things: The Art of Jasper Johns, as well as monographs on Wifredo Lam, Thomas Nozkowski, Joe Brainard, Catherine Murphy, A. R. Penck, Richard Artschwager, Pat Steir, Liu Xiaodong, and Kim Tschang-yeul.