Ross Bleckner: My Life in The New York Times

American painter Ross Bleckner (born 1949) has long been an avid reader of The New York Times, with decades' worth of clippings from the paper to prove it. In this artist's book, Bleckner has now orchestrated his archive into a beautifully printed “homage to print media” (as he described it on The Martha Stewart Show, where this volume was prominently previewed). My Life in The New York Times constitutes a kind of collaged media commonplace book, compiling fragments of advice, wisdom and comment, sequenced into a loose narrative based on the cycle of life, from childhood and school to career and ultimately death, with attendant themes of ambition, success, disappointment and tenacity tackled en route. Details such as scotch tape bleeding through the paper are lovingly reproduced here, projecting a charming mortality of materials amid the poignancy of the thoughts Bleckner gathers.