The Work of Art: How Something Comes from Nothing by Adam Moss

Penguin Review by David Starkey I first saw Adam Moss’s The Work of Art: How Something Comes from Nothing in a bookstore in Montpelier, Vermont, and immediately, like Wallace Stevens’s…

Webbed Skies by Melissa Cody

Museu de Arte de São Paulo / KMEC Review by David Starkey Webbed Skies is the monograph accompanying a recent exhibition of Melissa Cody’s weavings at the Museum of Modern…

Art Monster: On the Impossibility of New York by Marin Kosut

Columbia Review by David Starkey If you’ve ever had a friend who is brilliant, super-sarcastic, notices everything, can be incredibly mean but always is so in the service of some…

The Art of Dying: Writings, 2019-2022 by Peter Schjeldahl

Abrams Review by Walter Cummins Peter Schjeldahl ends his essay “The Art of Dying”—written when he was well aware of his terminal lung cancer—with a recognition that “Dying is my…

Looking At Mexico/Mexico Looks Back By Janet Sternburg with Comments by Jose Alberto Romero Romano

Distanz Review by Brian Tanguay Not long after receiving a copy of Looking at Mexico/Mexico Looks Back, Claudia Sheinbaum was overwhelmingly elected as Mexico’s first female president, a milestone in…

3 Shades of Blue: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and the Lost Empire of Cool by James Kaplan

Penguin Review by Walter Cummins Despite the depiction of the many triumphs of three of the greatest jazz musicians—many might argue of musicians in any genre—3 Shades of Blue is…

Lou Reed: The King of New York by Will Hermes

Farrar, Straus and Giroux Review by George Yatchisin Will Hermes admits he’s on a fool’s errand with the opening quote of the preface to his 529 page biography of Lou…

Bloom: On Becoming an Artist Later in Life by Janice Mason Steeves

Friesen Review by Linda Lappin Painter and art educator Janice Mason Steeves came to art quite by chance late in life after a friend invited her to attend a pottery…

The Upside-Down World: Meetings with the Dutch Masters by Benjamin Moser

Liveright Review by David Starkey Last month, I was lucky enough to be in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. This was my first visit to that august institution, so I…

All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me by Patrick Bringley

Simon & Schuster Review by David Starkey What in the world are they thinking, those uniformed museum guards standing in the corners of the galleries, looking alternately stern and bored,…