Christopher S. Wood’s A History of Art History will be eye-opening for anyone who cares about art.
Author Archives: Barry Schwabsky
Barry Schwabsky is art critic for The Nation and co-editor of international reviews for Artforum. His recent books include The Perpetual Guest: Art in the Unfinished Present (Verso, 2016) and a collection of poetry, Trembling Hand Equilibrium (Black Square Editions, 2015). Imminently forthcoming is a new book of essays, Heretics of Language (Black Square Editions, 2017).
Why Matisse Thought “A Picture Should Always Be Decorative”
For Matisse, decoration was never a secondary matter.
Constructing the Language We Breathe
For half a century, Keith and Rosmarie Waldrop have been (despite some serious competition) the most reliable conduit for poetry traveling from French and German into English.
A Poet Invents Her Voice
Ursula Andkjær Olsen’s Third-Millennium Heart is a beautiful monster of a book coming at you straight, with no padding of preface or foreword to warn you what you might be in for.
The Hard-to-Find Chapbooks of Geoffrey Young
Young is one of those poets, it seems, who prefers to do it all himself, how and when he feels like it.
Put On Sunglasses and Write a Poem
Almost every line in Chelsey Minnis’s Baby, I Don’t Care could have been lifted from a hard-boiled detective flick or a tough-talking screwball comedy.
On Impious Poetry and Poetic Faith
Navid Kermani puts his finger on what’s divisive in poetry and culture.
Vivian Maier, the Photographer Who Wanted to Go Unobserved
Maier didn’t want people to know where she lived, and often lied about her personal history.
The Earth as a Dump and Refuge
The Astropastorals, a new collection of poetry by Douglas Crase, brings together two decades of material in 18 pages.
How Not to Look at Pictures
Robert Walser was likely to find in images a reason to look into his own fervent imagination.
A Study of Art Galleries Reveals Their Aesthetic of Transcendental Experience
David Carrier’s The Contemporary Art Gallery is a small but well-stocked treasury of first-hand observations by someone who’s spent a lot of time in art galleries, but who has retained enough critical distance to see them with a certain objectivity.
A Painter Speaks, so that His Paintings Can Remain Silent
When René Magritte wrote “This is not a pipe,” he wasn’t negating the pipe so much as he was negating the language with which we attempt to grasp it.