OPTIC NERVE

“In this delightful autofiction—the first book by Gainza, an Argentine art critic, to appear in English—a woman delivers pithy assessments of world–class painters along with glimpses of her life, braiding the two into an illuminating whole.” —The New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice

“Appealing and digressive . . . Mari´a’s store of information about painters and their lives can make reading the book feel, delightfully, like auditing a course . . . Consistently charms with its tight swirl of art history, personal reminiscence and aesthetic theories.” —John Williams, The New York Times Book Review

“A roving, impassioned hybrid of art history and memoir . . . The pithy biographical portions of Optic Nerve are bracing correctives to potted textbook histories . . . Treat the chapters like stand–alone essays, each one enlivened by the delightful variety and idiosyncrasy of artistic obsession.” —Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal

Startlingly original . . . Both Gainza’s writing style and her taste in art display a preference for understatement . . . One senses a certain arbitrariness, a sincerity of taste that brings to mind Borges’s literary enthusiasms . . . Rare and exquisite.” —Maxine Swann, Los Angeles Review of Books