Lux in Tenebris, Latin for "Light in Darkness," is a line from Dylan Thomas’s “One Warm Saturday," the last story in “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog.” “The barman switched on the light. ‘A bit of lux in tenebris.’” A Latin-quoting barman, a high remark in a lowly setting, light and dark; such...

“Dreams and restless thoughts came flowing to him from the river… When Siddhartha awoke, the pale river shimmered past the door…The broad sheet of water glimmered pink in the light of the morning…’Yes’, said the ferryman, ‘it is a very beautiful river…I have often listened to it, gazed at it… One can learn much from...

“The trip was … one of risk … no one is allowed to sketch alive there … an artist who ventured there was shot while attempting a sketch … I flung open my sketchbook and drew the scene roughly … we then dashed down the path and seized another view and so on sketching and...

“There are perfectly sober people who will tell you they have seen high buildings shimmy.” “(Modern buildings) show their best to their devotees… (who) will point out to you a score of fleeting expressions in a façade.” Orrick Johns. “What the Modish Building Will Wear.” New York Times, Oct. 4, 1925. Architect and renderer of buildings,...

In Niklaus Troxler’s abstraction, green and yellow bands pulsate on black. Rectangular slivers of shapes draw the viewer across and down. Diagonal paths form along the way. Reinforced by its title, Echoes of Techno, the image emits rhythm and sound, progressing over time. Troxler’s poster can be “read” on multiple levels, as is true of...

In Alvin Lustig’s cover design for Ezra Pound’s Selected Poems, one shape moves by the other, led by its emanation. Rising to the surface, from field to foreground, negative space turns positive. Infinite mutations form a continuum that is hard-edged yet sensuous.