Svetlana Alpers

This study by two brilliant and eminently readable art historians looks at Tiepolo`s works as an example of the specifically pictorial as distinguished from the verbal intelligence. Alpers and Baxandall show that Tiepolo`s greatness lies not in stories told, or in meanings pursued, but in the use of his visual medium-drawing, painting, and natural lighting.

A magisterial study of celebrated photographer Walker Evans

The image of a tortured genius working in near isolation has long dominated our conceptions of the artist’s studio. Examples abound: think Jackson Pollock dripping resin on a cicada carcass in his shed in the Hamptons.

The image of a tortured genius working in near isolation has long dominated our conceptions of the artist’s studio. Examples abound: think Jackson Pollock dripping resin on a cicada carcass in his shed in the Hamptons. But times have changed; ever since Andy Warhol declared his art space a “factory,” artists have begun to envision themselves as the leaders of production teams, and their sense of what it means to be in the studio has altered just as dramatically as their practices.