“Personal and Impersonal Words”
An introduction to Henry James.
“Look Away”
New York Stories: The Best of the City Section of The New York Times.
“Some Musings on the Word Scandinavia”
Published in Lettre Internationale.
“Old Pictures”
An essay on photography.
“Goya’s Bodies: The Living, the Dead, and the Ghostly”
Since the Greeks, representations of the human body in Western art have been as various and contradictory as our notions of the body itself.
“Necessary Leaps”
A catalogue essay published by Kerber in the book Richard Allen Morris: Retrospective 1958-2004.
“Extracts from a Story of the Wounded Self”
Published in the Norwegian magazine Samtiden.
“Finding Goya’s Head”
An essay on visual art.
“Why Goya”
A couple of years ago, I was invited to give a lecture on aspects of Goya's work at the Studio School in New York. Since that time, I've noticed a growing popular fascination with the artist. Last year, Julia Blackburn published Old Man Goya, a very personal account of the painter's life. Robert Hughes and Evan S. Connell have recently completed books on Goya: Hughes's was published this month. Last summer, I ran into the producer Saul Zaentz, who told me he was working on a movie project about Goya, and controversy has recently surrounded the Black Paintings with the claims by Spanish art historian Juan José Junquera that Goya did not paint those astounding late works. For a man who has been dead for 175 years, Goya is remarkably present among us still.
“The Pleasures of Bewilderment”
An essay on Giorgione.
“Being a Man”
Conjunctions 41, Two Kingdoms: The Dualism Issue
“Remembering in Color”
An essay on Joan Mitchell.
“Double Exposure”
An essay on Gerhard Richter.
“Heaven’s Alphabet”
An essay on the Russian avant-garde book exhibition at MoMA, New York.
“The World Trade Center”
“The World Trade Center.” 110 Stories: New York Writers After September 11.
