Becca Rothfeld

Becca Rothfeld is the nonfiction book critic for the Washington Post. Previously she served as assistant literary editor of the New Republic and worked toward her PhD in philosophy at Harvard, where she focused on aesthetics and the history of philosophy. Her debut essay collection, "All Things Are Too Small," was published by Henry Holt in 2024.

Reviews• January 26, 2016

Only at Home in a Paradox: M.C. Escher Gets His Artworld Due

By Becca Rothfeld

Like Gustav Klimt or Claude Monet, the unwilling darlings of dorm room posters everywhere, Maurits Cornelis Escher belongs to the class of meritorious artists…

Reviews• November 19, 2015

Nothing in These Works is Given Freely: The Phenomenological Approach of Frank Auerbach

By Becca Rothfeld

“I think all good painting looks as though the painting has escaped from the thicket of prepared positions and has entered some sort of…

Reviews• September 28, 2015

The Incurable Distance of Gustave Caillebotte

By Becca Rothfeld

Gustave Caillebotte has been curiously canonized: first as Impressionist, then as Realist, then as more of a collector than an artist. Gustave Caillebotte: The…

Reviews• August 12, 2015

Bodies Beholden: The Changed Corporeality of David Salle’s New Paintings

By Becca Rothfeld

In a 2008 commercial for the Swiffer SweeperVac, a conservatively clad woman weaves back and forth with the futuristic device, apparently engaged in an…