Reader’s Journal: The glittering, dangerous adoration of visual art
by Heather Parish
Every month, I spend some time with a personal curriculum of books, essays, and long-form journalism that explores our artistic and cultural landscape. The Reader’s Journal will (from time to time) share some of that reading. Most selections will be nonfiction books, a few articles or essays, and the occasional art-themed fiction. Some may offer views of how artists and writers work or perspectives on art history. Others may explore how our culture evolves or how communities make meaning through creative and literary expression. All will be cultural arts-related. If readers have recommendations, please send them over or leave a comment!
August 2026 Curriculum
July and August focused a lot on visual art, what makes it obscene, what makes it healing, and what about it illuminates larger forces in the world. These three titles had different approaches, but were insightful reads. Dixon tackles the thorniness of judging (and censoring) art, Ostler posits how one famous portrait stands up against the historical atrocities it points to, and Bringley discusses his experience with art from the inside out – inside the Met that is!
Depraved: The Story of Dangerous Art
Daisy Dixon
Viking Publishing What makes one work “challenging” and another work “disgusting?” And how do we decide what to do about it? “Depraved: The Story of Dangerous Art” is partly an introduction to some of history’s more insidious artworks and artists, but mostly a guidebook to the elements of what may—or may not—be depraved art. Dixon guides the reader through a framework she proposes to engage with and evaluate art, artists, and their impact, including obscenity, criminality, oppression, malevolence, cruelty, iconoclasm and reparation.
Each section is thoughtfully presented with examples and thought experiments to inspire the readers’ own thinking and continues with a discussion on the questions brought up by those examples. Dixon also does an admirable job of addressing the counterpoint to her own views. The writing is clear, the voice is accessible to university students, arts aficionados, and adult readers curious about art and its cultural and political difficulties.
STORY CONTINUES AFTER SPONSORED CONTENT
I particularly recommend this to those looking to create their own clear framework on what basis to evaluate art, problematic artists and to decide how they can respond. They may not agree with all of her takeaways, but her examples provide some clear questions anyone can ask in the process. I only wish she had a companion pamphlet that folks could take into museums with them so they could practice asking the questions she poses in real time.
304 pages, Hardcover
Published August 11, 2026 by Viking
ISBN 9798217061846
All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me
Patrick Bringley
Simon & Schuster Bringley’s memoir describes his pivot from being a writer for “The New Yorker” to nearly a decade as a guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and is both a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at one of the world’s great museums and a quietly profound meditation on grief, healing, and the art of being alive. Through everyday encounters with visitors and fellow guards, along with once-in-a-lifetime moments among the museum’s masterpieces, Bringley reveals the Met as a surprisingly intimate place where anyone can find a personal connection to art if they simply slow down and look. His gentle passion for art and humanity never feels pretentious or academic; instead, he makes the museum feel accessible, inviting readers to become observers of both art and other people. At its heart, though, it is a mediation on how art and the routine stillness of his job helped him process the devastating loss of his brother. Beautifully written and wonderfully personal, it’s a book about grief, wonder, people-watching, and learning to pay attention to the preciousness of being alive.
240 pages, Paperback
Published October 29, 2024 by Simon & Schuster
ISBN 9781982163310
The Renoir Girls: A Hidden History of Art, War & Betrayal
Catherine Ostler
Atria Books This book is not for those easily daunted. . . At more than 400 pages, “The Renoir Girls” is a dense, sweeping history that begins with Renoir’s famous painting, “Pink and Blue,” and the three Cahen d’Anvers sisters. It then expands into a much larger story of Belle Époque Paris, Jewish assimilation, antisemitism, political extremism, war and betrayal. The narrative is especially compelling when she shows how antisemitism can move from casual prejudice and social exclusion and then to something far more dangerous, tracing that progression through the Dreyfus Affair and ultimately to the Holocaust. The sisters’ divergent fates at the hands of this awful progression give the history a personal dimension. However, be warned: while the title suggests a book centered on Renoir and the girls, they actually occupy less than half of this sprawling narrative. Still, the idea of this painting at the center of such a glittering society and then sweeping change is kind of fascinating. It becomes an emblem of how society’s advantages can seem permanent—until they aren’t. What begins as a book about a beautiful painting ends as a sobering meditation on the precariousness of privilege.
432 pages, Hardcover
Published July 14, 2026 by Atria Books
ISBN 9781668232484
