Another subject he has written about extensively will be taught in a spring course, Fine Arts 176x, "Piet Mondrian and De Stijl." The class will examine the early 20th century movement and collaborative effort among a group of Dutch artists and architects.

But there are no current plans to teach a Core class, or assume charge of Literature and Arts B-16: "Modern Art and Abstraction," popularly known as "Spots and Dots." Bois says he will eventually teach a large survey course, but he must first become accustomed to the Harvard system.

"It takes some time," says Bois. "I want to get acquainted with the whole thing. Sometimes these classes are gigantic, and I want to know how to deal with a huge crowd."

Scholarship

Bois is a prolific scholar. He has written several books, many articles and numerous reviews of exhibitions and printed works. His topics have varied from Piet Mondrian to El Lissitzky, and from the theory of Dutch architecture to Cubism.

In a new book called Painting the Model, he has brought together several of his previously published essays and reviews. Bois is currently working on a project about Ellsworth Kelly, an American modern artist.

Despite his broad interests, however, Bois has remained close to his training. Bois' scholarship is primarily concerned with how art is presented and presents itself, collegeues say. "His scholarship combines an approach shaped by his training with Barthes," says Johns Hopkins Professor Michael Fried, who was one of the two modernists in the department with Bois. "It is the best of structuralism and historicism."

"He is attentive to context and organization within art works," says Norman Bryson, professor of Fine Arts here at Harvard.

But scholars are quick to say that he is not an American formalist, someone who is only interested in how styles evolved. His emphasis on representation has produced "an amazing richness of interpretation" which formalism would never have allowed, says Bryson.

"'Formalist' is such a dirty word," Bryson says. "American formalism is a stagnant and uninteresting movement. I would not associate Alain's formalism with American formalism."

For Bois, his identity, both as historian and theorist, is still more complex. "I am a formalist who does not believe we can separate form and content, so it is not exactly formalist," says Bois. "If I am a formalist, let's say, my motto is more the Russian formalist than American formalist."