Books
Reader’s Diary: ‘Eva Hesse: Diaries’
An artist’s fame may continue, or even grow, as the actual works on which it is nominally based are lost from sight.
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Autumn Visionary: Alejandra Pizarnik’s Poems
A translator and critic as well as poet, Alejandra Pizarnik lived between Buenos Aries and Paris, befriending Octavio Paz and Julio Cortazar and identifying with, while not necessarily emulating, the so-called poètes maudites of 19th-century France.
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Etel Adnan: Philosophy at Night
Lebanese-American artist, philosopher, and poet Etel Adnan’s recent publication, Night, is in equal measure a series of meditations on intersubjectivity and spirituality, and a dialogue between prose poetry and short verse.
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Japan's Islands of Monsters
Every year around September, mud-covered figures run amok in the streets of the Shimajiri District in Japan's Okinawa Prefecture, smearing dirt on anyone they encounter.
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Inexplicable Found Photographs of Women in Trees
It all began at a flea market in Frankfurt, when photo collector Jochen Raiß came across a picture of a woman wearing a summer dress and high heels.
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Reader’s Diary: George Seferis's ‘Six Nights on the Acropolis’
George Seferis's mercurial tone can turn on a dime from lyricism to humor and back again, just as his characters shuttle between sensual abandon and neurotic self-flagellation.
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A Fictional Photographer Chronicles a Changing City
For several years, Ben Katchor explored in comics the vanishing (or long gone) rituals we associate with life in America's metropolitan centers.
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A Luminous NYPL Reading Room Reopens After a Two-Year Restoration
The central space of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building had been closed for repairs after one of the plaster rosettes on its ceiling plummeted to the ground in May 2014.
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Ed Ruscha’s Cactus Omelette and 75 Other Recipes by Artists and Writers
The new Artists' and Writers' Cookbook compiles recipes and personal food-related stories from 76 contemporary artists and writers, from Swoon's Mississippi ratatouille to Ed Ruscha's cactus omelette and Sanford Biggers' red drink.
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A 19th-Century Master of Light and Violence Reconsidered
In the spring of 1870, Paris had yellow fever. Not the disease, but the color, which spread as quickly as an epidemic among the most fashionable of the French capital. The cause was a gleaming painting named for the biblical John the Baptist-slayer "Salomé" on view at the annual state-sponsored Salo
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Hiroshi Sugimoto's Otherworldly Photographs of Movie Theaters
The question that Hiroshi Sugimoto asked himself in 1976 sounded a bit like a koan: What happens if you shoot a whole movie in a single frame?
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Reader’s Diary: Henri Lefebvre’s ‘Critique of Everyday Life’ (Conclusion)
Encore un effort on Lefebvre. My first go was nothing but objections. Round two started out with admiration but I soon found myself airing further criticism — almost against my will...