The wall of a jail cell, smeared with excrement as an act of protest, was filmed with such compositional care that it became, in effect, a work of abstract art, allowing us to forget what it actually was: human waste, applied with human rage, and surely unbearable to the human nose.

NEWYORKER: Hot and Bothered

What caught my eye this month is "The Sisters" (below), a hypnotically luminous 1991-93 abstract work by Brice Marden, one of America's leading artists and the subject of a new book, "Brice Marden: Phaidon Focus" (Phaidon).

WSJ: A Flower Arrangement Inspired by Art

In reaction, it was soon posited that abstract work had meaning, but as part of a code or system of signs.

ECONOMIST: 20th-century art

Unlike more abstract forms of criticism, which seem to place the work of art in a vacuum, Ms Showalter's is grounded in the lived lives of her subjects, for whom she provides vibrant biographical sketches.

ECONOMIST: Women's literature in America

There will also be exhibitions across the Tate dedicated to the work of abstract artist Kazimir Malevich, Germany's Sigmar Polke and a survey of British Folk Art.

BBC: Matisse and Turner in new Tate shows