“On Reading”
Essay published in the Columbia Journal.
“Three Emotional Stories: Reflections on Memory, the Imagination, Narrative and the Self”
In this essay, I propose that memory and the imagination partake of the same mental processes: that they are driven by emotion and often take narrative form.
“Reflections on a More or Less Hidden Being”
Published in the journal Contemporary Psychoanalysis.
“Stig Dagerman”
Foreword to “The Snake” (“Ormen”) by Stig Dagerman.
“Embodied Visions: What Does it Mean to Look at a Work of Art”
An essay on visual art.
“The Drama of Perception: Looking at Morandi”
An essay on Giorgio Morandi.
“My Inger Christensen”
An essay on writer Inger Christensen.
“The Enchanted and Demonic World of Annette Messager”
Some people remember their childhoods well. They remember what it felt like to play and pretend. Others don't. Their childish personas have vanished behind clouds of amnesia. Still others, some of whom are artists, continue to play and pretend all their lives.
“My Father Myself”
Determined thereto, perhaps by his father’s ghost,
Permitting nothing to the evening’s edge.
“Truth and Rightness”
A catalogue essay for Gerhard Richter.
“The Places that Scare You”
A tiny, slender woman with long hair tied back in a ponytail, regal posture, a shrewd expression and a forceful walk swept through the Pierre Matisse Gallery, an entourage of young men trailing behind her. She was dressed in black, and her presence acted on the room like a bolt of electricity. "Who is that?" I asked my husband. "Louise Bourgeois." "Oh, of course," I answered. A couple of years earlier, in 1982, the Museum of Modern Art had mounted a major show of her work. Curated by Deborah Wye, the exhibition brought the 71-year-old Bourgeois, who had been showing painting and sculpture in New York since the 40s, into the art-world limelight.
“Excursions to the Islands of the Happy Few”
“Excursions to the Islands of the Happy Few” (on expert culture) published in Philoctetes.
“Variations on Desire: A Mouse, A Dog, Buber, and Bovary”
Published in Conjunctions 41.
“Insides Out”
An essay on Kiki Smith.
“Duccio di Buoninsegna at the Met”
An essay on Duccio di Buoninsegna's “La Vierge et l’Enfant”.
