J. Bowyer Bell
| J. Bowyer Bell | |
|---|---|
| Born |
November 15, 1931 New York, New York |
| Died | August 23, 2003 (aged 71) New York, New York |
| Cause of death | Renal failure |
| Education |
|
| Occupation | Historian, artist, art critic |
| Spouse(s) |
|
| Children | 4 daughters with Charlotte Rockey |
J. Bowyer Bell (15 November 1931 – 23 August 2003) was an American historian, artist and art critic. He was best known as a terrorism expert.
Bell was born into an Episcopalian family on 15 November 1931 in New York City. The family later moved to Alabama, from where Bell attended Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, majoring in history. He also studied art, and discovered he had "total visual memory"–the equivalent of perfect pitch in a singer. His first solo art showing was in the college library in his senior year. He considered becoming a professional artist and made frequent visits to New York to visit other artists, including his hero Franz Kline, but committed to academia. Bell graduated in 1953, and began studying the Spanish Civil War at Duke University in North Carolina. Bell interrupted his studies at Duke after being awarded a Fulbright, and travelled to Italy to study at the University of Rome. Bell travelled Europe interviewing veterans of the Spanish Civil War, and in Rome he mixed with writers and artists including Cy Twombly. After returning to America, Bell completed his doctorate at Duke in 1958.
After graduating, Bell began teaching at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University and Trinity School in Manhattan. In 1962 he married Charlotte Rockey, an Egyptologist, and they moved into an apartment in Manhattan. In New York, Bell socialised with the likes of Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Jack Kerouac and Frank Stella at the Cedar Tavern. Bell exhibited his paintings and collages at the Allan Stone Gallery, and collected paintings and sculptures by artists including John Chamberlain. Bell was fascinated by global terrorism conflicts and decided to "write [his] way back into academia". While researching the Middle East, he discovered that the Irgun drew inspiration from the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the Irish War of Independence, and began to study the IRA. Bell and his family travelled to County Carlow in the Republic of Ireland in 1965, where he spent several months researching the Republican Movement. He discovered little had been published on Irish history after 1922, and the state archives were closed until the 1980s. He began research in the National Library of Ireland, and also interviewed Irish republicans in a Kilkenny public house and hotels in Dublin.
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