Book Review
The Paradoxical Promise of Postwar Liberation
Art history has struggled to address a contradictory artistic output that engaged with Japan’s modernization and occupation, a new book argues.
Books
Book Review
How the Wound Man Healed Medieval Europe
In a new book, art historian Jack Hartnell reconsiders the gruesome image as “one of the period’s most sophisticated repositories of medical hope.”
Book Review
Unpacking the Ageist Myths of Western Art
Scholar Larry Silver sheds light on depictions of old age in Greek, Biblical, and European art history, but misses a deeper exploration.
Guide
12 Art Books to Read This Fall
A Louise Bourgeois biography, Joe Sacco’s latest graphic investigation, a Wifredo Lam catalog, a study of diasporic Nigerian women artists, and more.
Books
Emily Mason’s Quest for Color and Truth
The late painter was influenced by Abstract Expressionism, but she had none of the hubris of its male artists. For her, painting was not about an experience, it was an experience.
Book Review
The Poetry of van Gogh’s Montmartre Years
Miles J. Unger’s new study on the artist is in part a critical biography and in part an impressive and sensitive account of his creation of some key paintings.
Feature
An Artist and a Historian Plumb Gynecology’s Hidden Histories
Nao Bustamante and Wendy Kline explore the racist, sexist, would-be-very-illegal-today methods through which we’ve come to understand the medical field.
Books
Passports, Prints, and Protest at the NY Art Book Fair
The indie presses exhibiting at Printed Matter’s annual fair, now back at MoMA PS1, put an irreverent twist on the subversive histories of radical publishing.
Book Review
Art Loves You Back When People Don’t
Stephanie Wambugu’s Lonely Crowds follows a painter whose devotion to a filmmaker keeps her from living her life, even as she gains access to the supposed upper echelons of the art world.
Book Review
André Breton After the Surrealist Manifesto
In the French poet’s later writings, now available in an English translation, his ideas about the movement he founded begin to mingle with our own.
Feature
Photographs That Depict Alzheimer's With Dignity
Alicia Vera documents and processes her mother’s disease diagnosis in a new book.
Feature
An Ancient Roman Guide to Trump’s Authoritarian Playbook
The authors of a new anthology argue that we can understand and counter authoritarianism’s rapid expansion today by looking at culture in the time of Julius Caesar.