The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone

“Laing's 2016 book traces loneliness through the work of Hopper, Warhol, Henry Darger, and David Wojnarowicz in New York. It is the most unexpected entry on this list, but it reads abstraction's capacity to hold emotional states without naming them against figurative art's obligation to show a face. The chapter on Warhol's silkscreens, and what repetition does to grief, is the most acute piece of art criticism in the book.”