By: Robert Wringham

She described her true self as an old woman chain-smoking on a front step.

By: Chris Spurgeon

The computer you’re using speaks the language he invented.

By: Adam McGovern

Soul music was never more literal.

By: Anthony Miller

Vicarious traveling to a made-up world.

By: Adrienne Crew

“The Beguiling of Merlin” tells this painter’s own life story.

By: Ingrid Schorr

“I don’t like turgid, voluminous sentences.”

By: Mike Fleisch

The most scrupulously self-aware of comedians.

By: Alix Lambert

“Forget all the standard art forms.”

By: Tom Nealon

“Don’t rap about your car, rap about what a car *is*.”

By: Peter Bebergal

Bordering on the grotesque, but also fragile.

By: Anthony Miller

The first scholar to take avant-garde film that seriously.

By: Anthony Miller

The patron saint of fiction of oceanic scope.

By: Peter Bebergal

He creates black-and-white surreal masterpieces.

By: Tucker Cummings

Not many artists who perform in a mouse costume get taken seriously.

By: Alix Lambert

Devotion and desolation are his themes.