Books
The Zen Mona Lisa
A review of an ancient Chinese ink painting takes an art critic on a journey through his own past.
Will Heinrich
Will Heinrich was born in New York and spent his early childhood in Japan. He writes about art for the New York Times and the New York Review of Books, and his most recent novel is From Darkness to Darkness (Thousand Horsemen Press,, 2026).
Art
Paintings that Embrace the Impossibility of Painting
Jaya Howey takes painting very seriously, and so he finds himself in a very serious corner.
Art
The Deadly Comedy of the Israeli Border Patrol in the Cave of the Patriarchs
In 1994, an American-born Jewish settler named Baruch Goldstein opened fire on Muslim worshipers in the Cave of the Patriarchs, an ancient building in central Hebron that stands over the putative tomb of Abraham, “father of multitudes.”
Art
Finding Dark Humor in the Plight of the Feminist Artist
In her latest exhibition, Death Is a Conceptual Artist, feminist icon Mira Schor delivers a slow-motion knockout blow.
Art
Searching for the Artist’s Intentions in Suspended, Sculptural Paintings
Someday the ascendant computers — having beaten us at chess, Jeopardy!, and giving directions — may share with the withering human spirit, numbed and narcotized by those same flickering screens, a moment of hideously dreamy half-consciousness.
Art
Paintings That Trick the Eye
Ryan Mrozowski has double vision.
Art
Two Artists Paint Through Different Philosophies
I don’t know about you, but I experience adulthood as an unremitting crisis of faith, and I look to art for examples of how to better think about what I’m doing.
Art
Flashes of Life in Sculpted Skulls and Frozen Faces
Son Ford was born with dying on his mind.