Anne Higonnet is the author of Pictures of Innocence: The History and Crisis of Ideal Childhood (Thames & Hudson, 1998), among other books, and professor of art history at Barnard College, Columbia University.
Anne Higonnet
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Writing on Public Books
Mend Your Ways
An exhibition of Japanese textiles celebrates repaired clothing: flipping salvage into sustainability, and damage into beauty.
Diane Arbus and the Power of Cruel Art
“What you notice about people,” Diane Arbus said, “is the flaw.” Arbus turned flaws into great photographs. During the 1950s and ’60s, she pointed her camera straight across polite social boundaries, at dwarves, nudists, disturbed children, the ugly, the afflicted, the uncertain, the caught-off-guard. What kind of person could work so intensely, for so long, […]
The Price of Great Art
When someone who made good art is accused of being a Bad Mother, can she ever be remembered as anything but a Bad Mother? In 1992, Mann’s book Immediate Family tapped into collective anxiety …
The Making and Masking of Genius
Siri Hustvedt’s The Blazing World puts a clever twist on an old plot. In most versions of this plot, a woman is born with creative genius. She has a moment of hubris, achieves sexual fulfillment, and endures reversals of fortune. Wiser, she realizes that only work, and maybe a child, can guarantee enduring joy. The heroine’s […]
