Abstract painting has spent much of the past decade in the doghouse. Not only has it been usurped by figurative painting, the genre du jour of a time defined by identity politics and visual representation, it has also been tarnished by its association with Zombie Formalism, gaining a reputation (often deservedly) for apathy and commercial cynicism. Amy Sillman’s selected writings are a welcome reminder that how you paint, as well as what you paint, is intimately associated with the experiences of the body, and that the affective and intellectual significance of process should not be underestimated. An influential American painter working in what might be called the afterlife of Abstract Expressionism, Sillman is also an inventive and charismatic writer. Published by After 8 Books, with an introduction by Lynne Tillman, Faux Pas comprises seventeen texts written for journals, zines, and lectures between 2009 and 2020. Included are a letter in which Sillman explains that she has broken up with abstraction, which she characterizes as an uptight ex; catalogue essays on peers and influences, Laura Owens, Eugene Delacroix, and Philip Guston among them; and idiosyncratic theories of shape, color, and the diagram, in the form of essays and cartoons. The book …