Published: February 2012

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Yayoi Kusama reappeared on the international art scene in the early 1990s after two decades of relative obscurity. Ever since, she has seen her fame and critical acclaim grow as never before—along with speculations that her “mental illness” may be part of a lifelong publicity strategy.

Published: January 2012

Publisher: Yale University Press

In the forthcoming monograph Alighiero e Boetti (Yale University Press), Tate Modern curator Mark Godfrey argues for the importance of the Italian polymath, who died in 1994 at the age of 53. Boetti's widely varied production and arcane processes has been a challenge to understand, and subsequently marginalized his output, although his colorful embroidered maps are well known. The book precedes, but is unrelated to, the July 1 opening of MoMA's, "Alighiero Boetti: Game Plan."

Published: January 2012

Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf

Writing his 1967 essay "The Death of the Author," Roland Barthes didn't imagine anything like the scene that comes two-thirds into Michel Houellebecq's fifth and latest novel, The Map and the Territory, which appeared in English last week. There we read in grisly detail about the murder and dismemberment of a character named and modeled after Houellebecq. Where Barthes wished to banish authorial biography and intention from literary criticism, Houellebecq's presence is unmistakable. Besides appearing as a character blessed with some of the book's best dialogue, the narrator's style is almost sarcastically flat, emphasizing words and phrases by simply putting them in italics, constantly reminding the reader of his authorial voice.

Published: December 2011

Discontinuity is one of the few constants among the 78 images in Untitled Photographs by Tim Barber, recently published by OHWOW. The artist's first monograph includes black-and-white and color work spanning the past 15 years and varies—wildly and in every way imaginable—in subject matter, style, method and affect. The Canadian-born, New York-based Barber courts this apparent inconsistency so aggressively that it's a stance, although the implications of his position are ambiguous. It is unclear whether he figures his eye alone provides understated coherence to the assembled exposures, or if he considers the entire issue of authorial sensibility irrelevant-perhaps outmoded.

Published: December 2011

Publisher: Prestel

After long production delays, the catalogue related to "Twice Drawn: Modern and Contemporary Drawings in Context," a wide-ranging two-part exhibition at the Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College in 2006, was finally published earlier this month. The interesting but odd volume raises a fundamental question: should it echo the intention and methods of the curatorial project, or build on its premise? To its detriment, Twice Drawn attempts to replicate the complexities of the exhibition.