“The year’s outstanding book of art criticism, a rich read, a goal for some of us to shoot for” (Holland Cotter, New York Times).

“Thoughtful, nuanced, and original” (Barbara MacAdam, ARTnews).

“[Porter’s] prose mirrors the imagination’s shifting priorities, leaping with delightful, mysterious rapidity from precisely analytical to poetically epigrammatic to almost mystical…Nobody is more alert to the metaphoric implications of pictorial particulars” (Jed Perl, New Republic).