Minor Black Figures Author : Brandon Taylor ISBN-13 : 978-1-787-33642-1 Publisher : Jonathan Cape Guideline Price : £18.99When the young black painter Wyeth meets Keating, a lapsed Jesuit priest, he confronts the roots of his stagnation, in art as in life. At the heart of Minor Black Figures is Brandon Taylor’s searingly intelligent critique of contemporary art and culture. Fear not – with his sensuous, almost tactile prose, Taylor makes the strictly technical exciting. Wyeth’s recovery of the work of an anonymous black artist, and with it, of a sense of history, is the book’s emotional zenith. The leap Taylor makes in Minor Black Figures – from utterly disenchanted to tentatively hopeful – is patiently and elegantly earned, culminating in its passages on what is to be found in being in the world, in having skin in the game: dignity, and grace.

Source: The Irish Times March 21, 2026 15:09 UTC