Notes & Links: 'The Lonely City'

Thank you to everyone in the San Francisco Bay Area and Bonn, Germany, who joined us today to discuss The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone by Olivia Laing.

This book, rooted in the visuals arts, especially lends itself to further reading, viewing, and exploring. Just a few of so many are listed below.

Books:

• Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other by Sherry Turkle (Turkle's website at MIT)

• Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World by former US Surgeon General and current US Surgeon General nominee Dr. Vivek Murthy

Films and Videos:

• Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954)

• Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)

• Her (Spike Jonze, 2013)

• We Live in Public (Documentary about Josh Harris)

• I Shot Andy Warhol (1996)

Artists and Art Online:

• Arthur Rimbaud in New York - Photographs by David Wojnarowicz

• A profile of and a few poems by Arthur Rimbaud

• Nighthawks by Edward Hopper (In the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago)

• Short video about Nighthawks

• The Edward Hopper collection at the Whitney Museum (includes photos of the pieces, videos about the art and artist, and recorded talks)

• “History Keeps Me Awake at Night” - 2018 exhibition of the work of David Wojnarowicz at the Whitney Museum of American Art

• The Andy Warhol Museum

• The work of Henry Darger - Includes a virtual tour of his tiny one-room apartment, some of his works

• Photography by Nan Goldin - Referenced in the section of the book about AIDS/HIV activism

• Strange Fruit by Zoe Leonard

• Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art

More from and about Olivia Laing

• Olivia Laing’s website

• Laing in conversation about her latest book, Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency (book link)

• 2020 interview, “Art Is a Tool for Thinking”

• "What Art Can Do in a Crisis" (NPR, 2020)

• Laing's upcoming book (scheduled for release this May): Everybody: A Book About Freedom

In March, we turn to Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World by Laura Spinney.