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Faith Ringgold: American People, 2022. Exhibition view. New Museum, New York. Photo by Dario Lasagni. Courtesy New Museum. © Faith Ringgold/ARS. One day, in the summer of 1972, Faith Ringgold visited the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. As an artist living in New York City, Ringgold had been making powerfully expressive figurative paintings about race in the United States for just under a decade —works like American People Series #20: Die (1967), a twelve-foot-long mural that depicts

Florence Rice Florence Rice had an abortion in the 1930s. I was sixteen when I had my daughter. They put her in my arms and she looked at me like, If you don’t want me, then I don’t want you either! You know, she just had that look, and I fell in love with her then. I began to dream about giving her the opportunities that I never had. Later on, I sort of went

The artist at her exhibition Tracey Emin “My Bed’”/JMW Turner at Turner Contemporary, 2017 2018. Photo by Stephen White; courtesy Turner Contemporary. My in-laws live in the north of England. Their modest semi-detached home is decorated tastefully with trinkets from their world travels, family photos, and a few replicas of notable artworks. I love the juxtaposition of viewpoints when I’m in their house. Inside, my eyes bounce from the Mondrian-inspired glass door, a miniature painting

North Yorkshire, UK; Methuen Drama, 2008, 288 pp., $25.95, paperback A short synopsis of English playwright Sarah Kane’s 1995 play Blasted: Tabloid journalist Ian and his much-younger girlfriend, Cate, check into a hotel room. Ian makes several racist and homophobic comments and berates Cate’s intelligence. They discuss what seems to be a war going on around them. He coerces her into uncomfortable, violent sexual acts. She escapes through the bathroom window. A soldier bursts into

Who is this woman looking out toward the sea? She could be me, she could be someone you know—I won’t say it’s you, I don’t know you. She’s probably white, possibly gay, but probably not. Able-bodied enough to climb down treacherous rocks to be near the water. She’s dealing with heartbreak or pending heartbreak; she either longs to be alone or is lonely. Nothing can stop her from this contemplation. This is why she looks

All images from Presença: We Are Here, a series of embroidered 16 x 20-inch photographs. Aline Mello, 2022. IT’S SUMMER BREAK after the first year of my MFA at Ohio State. I am living with my stepfather and mother in their house about thirty minutes outside Atlanta. I am thirty-three, but when I’m at Mamãe’s house, I revert to thirteen. When I cook something, she sucks in air through her teeth. You made that this

Ruth Wilson and Tom Burke in True Things (2021) Photo courtesy of BBC Films. A few days before Christmas, we met a friend at a fancy grocery store in Hudson, where people sit at a long table, drinking lattes and eating focaccia. We hadn’t seen our friend in a while. She looked happy in the way of people who have recently jumped out of an airplane. I said, “I was thinking about Jesus.” She said,

Cecily Brown. ‘Selfie,’ 2020. Oil on linen, 43 × 47 in. The Swartz Family Collection. © Cecily Brown. Can a painting be its own opposite? The works in Cecily Brown’s mid-career survey Death and the Maid are both abstract and figurative, canonically referential and hedonistically maximal, their carnivalesque palettes slashed with monotone grays. They are, at once, both surface and core. The show greets you with a large canvas titled Selfie (2020), which depicts a

Laurie Stone at the Morton Street Pier in New York City, c. 1970. Photo courtesy of author. Yesterday, I received a check for the security deposit on my apartment in New York City. It’s done. I lived there for forty-three years. I have visions of the open road, except we can’t go anywhere. In unpacking from the move, I found notebooks I wrote in the 1970s. The particulars of my life are news to me—who