Woven Writing in Early China by Michelle H. Wang examines Chinese woven inscriptions dated from the first to fifth centuries CE and excavated in Xinjiang in order to explore the relationship between close reading and close looking as part of the study of writing in art history.

Through an examination of the miracles of Anthony of Padua painted by Girolamo da Treviso in the Saraceni Chapel, Miracles in Monochrome: Grisaille in Visual Hagiography by Diana Bullen Presciutti demonstrates the complex ways in which monochrome painting would have created meaning for diverse audiences in the sixteenth century.

Michael Ann Holly’s essay, Back of the Painted Beyond, offers reflections on connections between current art-historical critical theory and mid-twentieth-century phenomenology, illustrated by examples of early modern Northern European works of art from the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.

Through the close analysis of one painting, Augustus Earle’s Waterfall in Australia and the Logic of Fantasy by Keith Broadfoot seeks to demonstrate how colonial art can be seen anew by a re-engaging with the work of Lacan.

Picturing the Edwardian Family Man: The Nicholsons at Home by Jongwoo Jeremy Kim examines the paradox of domestic alienation by exploring paintings of a household that was neither entirely normative nor fully subversive.

Rye Dag Holmboe’s essay, Martin Creed: The Light, examines this artist’s performances and installations through the lens of psychoanalytic theories of neurosis and hypochondria, arguing that in both seriality functions as an armour or defence against the perceived threat of omnipotent mothers.

Made in Italy by Rosalind McKever considers three recent publications on post-war Italian art. Louisa Lee evaluates two new books in ‘Why Use Language?’: Defining Conceptual Art and Writing. An account of post-soviet art is reviewed in Opting for Decoloniality: A Politics of Non-Politics by Angela Harutyunyan. Local Networks and Global Narratives: Probing the Legacy of Abstraction in Eastern Europe and Latin America by Laura González assesses an edited collection dedicated to kinetic and op art. Beth Williamson discusses a pair of publications in Play and Pedagogy in Art History and Material Culture. And in Luxury and the Loom: Re-thinking Modernism’s Materiality Deborah Lewer addresses new research in the field of twentieth-century art.