Selected writings on past and present artists from Schwartz’s 20-year tenure at the New York Review of Books

For some 50 years, author Sanford Schwartz has written about artists, writers and filmmakers in his own unique voice. His conversationally written pieces present large, synoptic views of an artist’s ambitions and frequently include engagingly detailed descriptions of artworks. Although appreciated by artists and art professionals alike, Schwartz’s writing is geared to the wider audience: people who want to more deeply experience the artworks they may have encountered in passing.

For his third book of criticism, Schwartz has selected writings from the past 20 years, accompanied by 40 pages of full-color illustrations. Alongside novel considerations of Willem de Kooning, Louise Bourgeois and Frida Kahlo, Schwartz provides living portraits of the increasingly renowned outsider artist Martín Ramírez and the uncategorizable moviemaking puppeteers the Quay Brothers, among many others.

Sanford Schwartz (born 1946) is the author of critical biographies of Christen Købke, William Nicholson and Edward Hicks. He is a longtime and frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books.