In the Image and Likeness

"These poetic prose piecesùneither stories nor essays nor poemsùdisplay humor, imagination, and a sense of the absurd to explore a range of topics and ideas. Four great artists are explored in very different ways: an interior monologue by the 17th-century Spanish painter Velßzquez as he paints his masterpiece, Las meninas; a longer monologue by 19th-century Spanish painter Goya, spoken to the Duchess of Alba; short views of paintings by Picasso; and a look at the eccentric German collage painter and Dadaist Kurt Schwitters as he collects scraps, clippings, and castoffs. Unique in the approach to the concepts of story and history, these and other short pieces form an avant-garde collage of words and ideas."