“What I wanted more than anything was to be standing beside Schmidt, in concert with Schmidt, at the foot of Saint Sebastian’s Abyss along with Schmidt, hands cupped to the sides of our faces, debating art, transcendence, and the glory of the apocalypse.” Former best friends who built their careers writing about a single work of art meet after a decades-long falling-out. One of them, called to the other’s deathbed for unknown reasons by a “relatively short” nine-page email, spends his flight to Berlin reflecting on Dutch Renaissance painter Count Hugo Beckenbauer and his masterpiece, Saint Sebastian’s Abyss, the work that established both men as important art critics and also destroyed their relationship. A darkly comic meditation on art, obsession, and the enigmatic power of friendship, Saint Sebastian’s Abyss stalks the museum halls of Europe, feverishly seeking salvation, annihilation, and the meaning of belief.

A historical children's book about St. Sebastian, St. Quadratus, St. Tarcisius, St. Pancratius, and St. Agnes, young and courageous Christians who faced cruel persecutions during the time of the Early Church.

Artwork by Luigi Ontani, Paul Schrader, Louise Bourgeois, Chris Burden, Francesco Clemente, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Fiona Tan. Photographs by Catherine Opie, David Wojnarowicz. Text by Wolfgang Tillmans.

Plague, a devastating and recurring affliction throughout the Renaissance, had a major impact on European life. Not only was pestilence a biological problem, but it was also read as a symptom of spiritual degeneracy and it caused widespread social disorder. Assembling a picture of the complex and sometimes contradictory responses to plague from medical, spiritual and civic perspectives, this book uncovers the place of music - whether regarded as an indispensable medicine or a moral poison that exacerbated outbreaks - in the management of the disease. This original musicological approach further reveals how composers responded, in their works, to the discourses and practices surrounding one of the greatest medical crises in the pre-modern age. Addressing topics such as music as therapy, public rituals and performance and music in religion, the volume also provides detailed musical analysis throughout to illustrate how pestilence affected societal attitudes toward music.

A global pandemic has America under quarantine. In a run-down apartment building, with nowhere to go and nothing to do, five people-a philosopher, an academic, a filmmaker, a sculptor, and a philanthropist-come together, at first only for the pleasure of company. But then they find themselves in a ferocious debate about the obsessions that drive their lives and a ruthless quest to discover the secrets that brought them together. Their passions and betrayals play out against the dangerous backdrop of a state-enforced lockdown and a disease that can strike anyone at any time. The eventually explosive conflicts among these poor artists, underfed intellectuals, and desperate fanatics pose urgent questions of art and inequality, health and freedom, faith and power, love and death. The Quarantine of St. Sebastian House is at once a Platonic dialogue, a poem in prose, and a suspenseful story of mystery and romance: a fresh narrative for a new era.

“Let us agree,” Federico Garcia Lorca wrote, “that one of man’s most beautiful postures is that of St. Sebastian.” “In my ‘Saint Sebastian’ I remember you,” Salvador Dali replied to Garcia Lorca, referring to the essay on aesthetics that Dali had just written, “. . . and sometimes I think he is you. Let’s see whether Saint Sebastian turns out to be you.” This exchange is but a glimpse into the complex relationship between two renowned and highly influential twentieth-century artists. On the centennial of Dali's birth, Sebastian’s Arrows presents a never-before-published collection of their letters, lectures, and mementos. Written between 1925 and 1936, the letters and lectures bring to life a passionate friendship marked by a thoughtful dialogue on aesthetics and the constant interaction between poetry and painting. From their student days in Madrid's Residencia de Estudiantes, where the two waged war against cultural “putrefaction” and mocked the sacred cows of Spanish art, Dali and Garcia Lorca exchanged thoughts on the act of creation, modernity, and the meaning of their art. The volume chronicles how in their poetic skirmishes they sharpened and shaped each other’s work—Garcia Lorca defending his verses of absence and elegy and his love of tradition while Dali argued for his theories of “Clarity” and “Holy Objectivity” and the unsettling logic of Surrealism. Christopher Maurer’s masterful prologue and selection of letters, texts, and images (many generously provided by the Fundacion Gala-Salvador Dali and Fundacion Federico Garcia Lorca), offer compelling and intimate insights into the lives and work of two iconic artists. The two men had a “tragic, passionate relationship,” Dali once wrote—a friendship pierced by the arrows of Saint Sebastian.