Shriver’s new novel, So Much For That, which deals with America’s health care crisis, is out March 9th.

Lincoln Perry’s mural at the University of Virginia re-envisions the building’s view of distant mountains as the acme of a kind of secular Pilgrim’s Progress.

Elizabeth Murray and Jennifer Bartlett, painters and lifelong friends, reminisce about the ambitious New York art world of the 1960s and ‘70s in this Fall/2005 interview.

Herrera’s use of profane materials—familiar, commonplace images—“contaminate” the carefully circumscribed world of the abstract.

Yinka Shonibare first came to widespread attention through his use of Dutch wax fabric, which he has used both as the ground of his paintings and to clothe his sculptures. 

These two New York natives discuss growing up in Brooklyn, the allure of the of the Museum of Natural History, and the perils of the autobiographical question in this instant classic from 2005.

Musician, electronic composition innovator, and MacArthur fellow Lewis has been documented in more than 120 recordings as well as numerous installations and written texts. He talks with Parker about where improvisation and politics intersect.

The celebrated playwright and author converses with theater producer Morphos (behind, most recently, Sam Shepard’s The God of Hell), about his book of short stories, A Primitive Heart. In all of Rabe’s work, the past haunts his protagonist.

The night before Ellen went shopping with Pat, she dreamed she was gazing at a painting that created the illusion of a portal opening upon a grove of citrus trees. Within it a naked goddess tossed grain to a large rose-colored bird. Awakening alone in a room so banal it made her weep, she dressed for the day without enthusiasm.

Other countries that went through hell in the 1990s—Rwanda, Bosnia—have had truth commissions and war crimes tribunals. Algeria has had amnesties, press censorship, and propaganda.

My heart wrings out and pours, / the machine buzzes. / My skin opens like drums.

It has been a singular pleasure to watch Fiona blossom over the course of the semester, as a mathematician and a person. She is consistently well-prepared, exudes a quiet sweetness, and is beginning to take on a leadership role in the classroom

Mimi Thompson on how Stanley Whitney’s colorful grid paintings aspire to “density with a lot of air.”

Saul Ostrow on how Jon Kessler’s sculptures and installations explore the aesthetic and the role of technology and mass media in our lives.

Jan Estep on how both visual process and internal psychology play a role in the abstracts of Clarence Morgan.

Cannon Hudson paints architectural interiors. On first glance, many of his paintings look like pictorial space populated by shapes resembling Sol LeWitt sculptures.

Stephen Vitiello’s Buffalo Bass Delay sounds like an audio-guided tour through a vast, vacant human body—an echoing, cavernous space full of familiar sounds, now in ruins and feeling desolate and alien. 

Family portraiture is the autobiographical pretext for two remarkable recent books of photography by Eri Morita (Ho and Stuart O’Sullivan (How Beautiful This Place Can Be), two New York-based 30-something photographers.

Here we are, if not on the frontlines of the culture war, then at least among the reserve forces. 

This may well be the perfect autobiography.

Disclosure: not long ago, James Frey wrote an essay for a book of my photographs. Before that, we met entirely by chance. 

The “willful creatures” in Aimee Bender’s aptly titled new book of short stories are an often cruel, yet always vulnerable group of misfits negotiating the pain pervading their attempts to connect with the world around them.

It is difficult to gauge the level of outrage that will greet the US release of Adam Curtis’s film The Power of Nightmares, originally broadcast as a three-part BBC series last October.