Books
Geoffrey O'Brien's Poetics of Compression
The poet casts himself as an escapist reader, amassing archives to be condensed as paraphrase.
Review
Books
Dissolving the Boundaries of Asian American Fiction
Janalyn Guo takes Asian American fiction to a new place, where old categories no longer apply.
Art
Eleanor Ray’s Sacred Spaces
There is a deep, warm solitude running through all of Eleanor Ray’s paintings — a sense of being alone and luxuriating in the human silence and changing light.
Art
What Is “Outsider” in Unthinkable Times?
Art’s uplifting power is unmistakably real; today, the works of the most original autodidacts feel more compelling than ever.
Books
An English Translation of Belgian Surrealist Writing
Authors Paul Nougé, Paul Colinet, and Louis Scutenaire exhibited a staunch ethic of underground and elliptical obscurity.
Art
Bill Brandt’s British Reality Show
Brandt’s photographs are dense with the enigmas and silences, riddles and obscurities hidden beneath ordinary British lives.
Art
The Met’s Wrong Turn on Revisionism
When an exhibition is as puzzling as this one, it’s useful to step aside and reflect.
Film
A Chronicler of Soviet and Post-Soviet Life Blurs Fact and Fiction
At the Museum of the Moving Image’s First Look festival, audiences will get to see different sides of Sergei Loznitsa, who examines the past, the present, and where they intersect.
Books
Bill Cunningham’s Posthumous Memoir Isn’t Quite What You’d Expect
In the beloved fashion photographer's posthumous memoir, we get a peek into his origin story.
Art
Photos Reveal How San Francisco and LA Dramatically Grew After 1850
An exhibition documents how California and photography grew up together, and how photos influenced the rest of the country’s perception of the state’s two leading cities.
Books
Growing Up in the Avant-Garde Circles of Wallace Berman
Through his father, Wallace, Tosh Berman was in the middle of a vivid circle of artists, writers, and musicians who regarded art as the opposite of cultural business.
Books
Photojournalism in Nashville During the Civil Rights Era
A book of photos of Nashville at the height of the Civil Rights Movement conveys a story of promises both fulfilled and denied.