Defining Contemporary Art: 25 Years in 200 Pivotal Artworks takes an innovative approach to surveying the art of the last quarter century, which is notoriously difficult to periodize or define. Eschewing grand narratives, Phaidon asked for individual artwork selections from eight of today’s most influential curators.

Unfortunately (or fortunately), we can’t all afford to go to art school. But now there’s a much cheaper way to learn from the likes of John Baldessari or Liam Gillick. The Brooklyn-based contemporary art journal Paper Monument, a sister publication of literary magazine n + 1, has released Draw It with Your Eyes Closed: The Art of the Art Assignment, which proves that the studio classroom isn’t the only place to learn about making art.

Last Thursday the French New York-based artist Anne-Lise Coste visited toomer labzda to give a talk about m, l, e, her latest body of work on display at the young Lower East Side gallery. For the exhibition, forty-eight small and medium-sized canvases filled two walls of the gallery space from floor to ceiling. Each canvas presented a loose portrait of one of the three letters in black spray paint on a white ground, in a balance of severity and airiness. Taken together, the paintings developed a meditative rhythm, resembling a tapestry of interlocking loops and curves, or perhaps a body of text.