Books
Constable’s Quiet Tumult
New York Review of Books
Christopher Benfey reviews three books about John Constable: John Constable: A Portrait by James Hamilton, Constable’s White Horse by William Kentridge and Aimee Ng, and Late Constable by Anne Lyles, Matthew Hargraves, and others. Benfrey reviews each book while considering the question “What do John Constable’s seductive paintings—those cunningly constructed scenes of English rural life […]
Ninth Street Women
The New Yorker
Claudia Roth Pierpont reviews Mary Gabriel’s new book Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art (Little, Brown and Company). Roth Pierpont writes: “Mary Gabriel’s timely and ambitious new book, “Ninth Street Women,” provides a multifaceted account of the […]
Samuel Beckett and Painting
artcritical
Michael Coffey reviews Beckett’s Thing–Painting and Theatre by David Lloyd (Edinburgh University Press) Coffey writes: “David Lloyd, in his long-awaited book on Samuel Beckett and the visual arts, arrives, in his closing chapter, at this electrifying thought: ‘The political effect of Beckett’s work in general takes place not at the level of statement, but in […]
The World New Made: Figurative Painting in the Twentieth Century
Hyperallergic
David Carbone reviews Timothy Hyman’s new book The World New Made: Figurative Painting in the Twentieth Century, published by Thames & Hudson. Carbone writes: “this [book] is not so much an ‘objective’ survey as a personal examination of specific works from the vastness of twentieth century achievements that Hyman believes can serve as a foundation for […]
The Soul of Alice Neel
New York Review of Books
Claire Messud reviews the new catalogue Alice Neel: Painter of Modern Life (Mercatorfonds/Yale University Press). The exhibition will be on view at Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, Netherlands from November 5, 2016 – February 12, 2017. Messud concludes: “This exhilarating compendium of Neel’s oeuvre is remarkably cohesive, in spite of the diversity of Neel’s images and subjects, […]
Reading Cy Twombly
The Paris Review Daily
Mary Jacobus blogs about the “inventive use of literary quotation and allusion throughout [CyTwombly’s] long career and his relation to poetry as an inspiration for his art,” the subject of her new book Reading Cy Twombly: Poetry in Paint (Princeton University Press).
Rothko and Music
The Art Newspaper
In excerpt from his new book, Mark Rothko: from the Inside Out (Yale University Press), Christopher Rothko reflects on his father’s love of music (in particular Mozart) and its influence on his paintings. Christopher Rothko writes: “Rothko paintings, at their most affective, do engage us in a full-body experience touching all the senses. On the […]
Discovering Milton Resnick
Ploughshares
John Skoyles blogs about Milton Resnick: Painter in the Age of Painting, Geoffrey Dorfman’s new manuscript about New York School painter Milton Resnick. Skoyles writes: “The narrative contains transcriptions of interviews about the lives of artists of that period. Dorfman’s and Resnick’s sensibilities complement each other perfectly. As Dorfman notes, ‘There are two voices running […]
Robert Goodnough: Subject Matter of the Artist
A new book unearths a lost primary source, penned by a significant artist, one that sheds first-person light on some of the most iconic artists of the New York School.
Headlong
Venetian Red
Liz Hager reviews the novel Headlong by Michael Frayn, a “thoroughly engaging tale of the easily distracted and ethically challenged philosopher, who convinces himself that he has discovered a ‘lost’ Bruegel.”
Robert Walser’s Microscripts
Robert Walser’s “Microscripts” are some of the most visually interesting pieces of 20th century writing.