Blake Gopnik
# Blake Gopnik

Blake Gopnik (born 1963) is an American art critic who has lived in New York City since 2011. He previously spent a decade as chief art critic of The Washington Post, prior to which he was an arts editor and critic in Canada. He has a doctorate in art history from Oxford University. He is the author of Warhol, a biography of the American artist Andy Warhol.

## Personal life

Blake Gopnik was born in Philadelphia in 1963, to Irwin and Myrna Gopnik, with whom he moved to Montreal as a child. He and his five siblings—Berkeley psychologist Alison, writer Adam, oceanographer Morgan, archeologist Hilary, and Melissa Gopnik, who manages a nonprofit—grew up in Moshe Safdie's brutalist housing community, Habitat 67.

Gopnik is married to the artist Lucy Hogg; they have one son.

## Education

Gopnik was educated in French at the Académie Michèle-Provost and then trained as a commercial photographer. He went on to study at McGill University, where he received an honors B.A. in medieval studies, with a specialization in Vulgate and medieval Latin. In 1994, he completed a doctorate at the University of Oxford on realism in Renaissance painting and the philosophy of representation.

## Career

After receiving his doctorate, Gopnik returned to Canada, where he held minor academic jobs, before switching to journalism. In 1995, he became the editor-in-chief of Insite, an architecture and design magazine, and was later hired as the fine arts editor at The Globe and Mail. In 1998, he became the Globe's art critic. From 2000 to 2010, Gopnik worked at The Washington Post as chief art critic. He wrote more than 500 articles about art, ranging from China's terracotta warriors to Andy Warhol's work. He was a pioneer in web video at the Washington Post.

In 2011, Gopnik was hired as the art and design critic at Newsweek magazine and its Daily Beast web site. He is also a regular contributor to The New York Times.

In 2020, he published a comprehensive biography of Andy Warhol through HarperCollins.

