Barry Schwabsky

"Many consider Barry Schwabsky to be the critic on painting today, even if he does write copiously on other art forms," write editors Rob Colvin and Sherman Sam in their foreword to this selection of Schwabsky's writings. Written since the turn of the millennium, the texts in The Oberver Effect include meditations on the broader context of painting today alongside reflections on such well-known American painters as Alex Katz, Kerry James Marshall,...

"Amelia Rosselli is one of the great poets of postwar Italy, and recognized as such throughout Europe. She was also a musician and musicologist, close to John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen, and she waged a lifelong battle against depression. The child of Carlo Rosselli, a major figure in the resistance to Mussolini who was assassinated with his brother Nello in 1937, Rosselli grew up in exile and went to high school in Scarsdale, making her fluent...

"Building can be seen as a master metaphor for modernity, which some great irresistible force, be it fascism or communism or capitalism, is always busy building anew, and Houses is a book about a man, Arseniev Negoyan, who has devoted his life and his dreams to building. Bon vivant, Francophile, visionary, Negoyan spent the first half of his life building houses he loved and even gave names to--Juliana, Christina, Agatha--making his hometown of Belgrade...