‘Distinguishing Piss from Rain’ is an indispensable contribution, a compilation of writings and reflections from the inimitable Glenn Ligon, who presently has an exhibition on view at 52 Walker with alumni of The Kitchen, Julius Eastman. Ligon’s capacity to weave together avant-garde histories that show a lineage of where the Black radical tradition has defined the entire trajectory of experimentalism is profound, exciting, tender and urgent. Offerings from a lifetime of collaborators such as Thelma Golden, T. Lax, Byron Kim, Hamza Walker and so many more boundary-defying, groundbreaking thinkers bring us along in considerations of ‘What now?,’ ‘Now what?’ and ‘ARE WE THERE YET?’ as Ligon’s visions lead us from his beginnings in the Bronx across work, life, love and everything in-between. This compilation includes one of my personal favorite writings from Ligon, ‘Notes on a Performance by Kellie Jones’ (2015), which was included in another Kitchen alumni's special publication, ‘On Value’ (2016). To call on Ligon’s words: ‘...Miles playing with his back to the audience (also a better position to cue the band from). We’re the band.’ Yes—we certainly are. All hail Glenn Ligon, G.O.A.T.!

—Legacy Russell

The late Phyllida Barlow was both a fantastic artist and one of the most influential teachers in her four-decade career at London’s Slade School of Art (past pupils include Rachel Whiteread and Tacita Dean). It would’ve been my dream to be taught by Barlow—I was lucky enough to interview her—but this rich collection of past interviews, lectures, essays and thoughts on other artists (from Eva Hesse to Louise Bourgeois) will give you that education. Her teachings live on through her words. Never saying the same thing twice, Barlow saw the world profoundly—always questioning, looking and working things out.  
 
What also resonates is how engaged Barlow was, inviting other people’s opinions in, too. There’s a great moment in a conversation with Daniel Baumann where she asks the audience if they have any problems with her show: ‘Does anyone here really hate it?’ Only to go on to discuss the importance of a ‘passionate response at both ends of the spectrum’ being something ‘incredibly stimulating.’

—Katy Hessel

There are countless biographies of artists, but very few are as intimate, as revealing and as moving as this memoir of Philip Guston by his daughter, Musa Mayer. Seen through her eyes—first as a small girl and later, as a teenager and married woman—Mayer’s deeply affectionate, unflinching portrayal of her father makes clear not only the struggles that Guston faced in his evolution as one of the 20^th-century’s great painters but the impact his single-minded dedication had on his wife, the artist Musa McKim Guston, and his only child.  

From its opening line—‘The summer my father died, I wanted to go home’—to its closing sentence conjuring ‘the way that memories blur, running into one another in the dilution of time,’ ‘Night Studio’ explores what it means to love, to create, to remember and to mourn. I have read it twice now. I’m quite sure I’ll read it again.

—Jennifer Higgie

_{Portrait of Legacy Russell. Photo: Andreas Laszlo Konrath; Portrait of Katy Hessel. Photo: Lily Bertrand-Webb. Courtesy Katy Hessel; Portrait of Jennifer Higgie. Photo Courtesy Jennifer Higgie}