"Insightful and opinionated, erudite and amusing, this collection by the author of A Life of Picasso is a marvelously eclectic mix of essays on artists and writers, tastemakers and tycoons. These pieces, each illustrated with a photograph or artwork, were selected by the author …
"In New York at the turn of the twentieth century, the photographer and modern-art impresario Alfred Stieglitz and his allies embraced a racialized aesthetic discourse in their expressions of identity. Creative composites examines the often neglected role played by immigrant art…
In 1952, John Cage shocked audiences with 4'33", his compositional ode to the ironic power of silence. From Cage's minimalism to Chris Burden's radical performance art two decades later (in one piece he had himself shot), the post-war American avant-garde shattered the divide be…