On my desk at work:
1. The Air is Blue: Insights on Art & Architecture: Luis Barragán Revisited, edited by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Pedro Reyes, 2006
Hans Ulrich Obrist invited a group of artists to create work in response to the Mexican architect Luis Barragán’s private residence, which was turned into a museum following his death. The catalog documents both the art and writing they created after experiencing the seminal architect’s use of color and light.
2. Pleasures and Terrors of Domestic Comfort, by Peter Galassi, 1991
I recently came across a catalog from this seminal 1991 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. What an amazing group of iconic images. Galassi is one of the truly great photography curators of our time.
On my bedside table at home:
3. Glittering Images: A Journey through Art from Egypt to Star Wars, by Camille Paglia, 2012
I missed cultural critic Camille Paglia’s talk at SCAD this fall but am enjoying her rapid fire tour through the history of Western Art. I don’t agree with everything she says but I appreciate her clear love of art and healthy skepticism of the art world.
4. The Girl with the Gallery, by Lindsay Pollock, 2007
This biography looks at the pioneering mid-century gallerist Edith Gregor Halpert, who showed American modernists such as Arthur Dove, Stuart Davis, Charles Sheeler and Jacob Lawrence in her New York space. Lindsay Pollock, Editor of Art in America, gave me this copy when she spoke at the arts writing conference at Emory last fall.
5. A Treasury of Poems, compiled by Sarah Anne Stuart, 1996
While I know a Rembrandt from a Rubens and a work by Beethoven from Brahms, I cannot tell the difference between Ralph Waldo Emerson and John Keats. I’ve noticed an increasing prevalence of poetry in the art world lately, so I’m spending some time with the classics to see if I can resurrect some of the lessons I know I had during high school.
Rebecca Dimling Cochran is a freelance art critic and Curator of the Wieland Collection.
