cover image The Primacy of Touch

The Primacy of Touch

. Hudson Hills Press, $45 (131pp) ISBN 978-1-55595-075-0

Past and present, dream and reality, collide and interpenetrate in the delicate drawings of American artist Peter Milton, who is best known for his prints of Victorian complexity. The 75 drawings reproduced here dwell on private dramas, fantasies of eros unchained and reverie as an antidote to history. In a series of sketches loosely based on Henry James's novella, The Aspern Papers , Milton places James himself in a beautifully decadent Venice alongside significant figures in the novelist's life. Mary's Turn , a drawing of Edgar Degas and Mary Cassatt playing billiards, contains allusions to Degas's misogyny and anti-Semitism. The Train From Munich , an allegory on the rise of Nazism, is spiked with references to Leni Riefenstahl, Marcel Duchamp, Paul Klee and Albrecht Durer. In her introduction, novelist Brown artfully deciphers Milton's complex dramas of the psyche, and commentaries by the artist provide helpful interpretive keys. (Jan.)