Book Talk: Alexis Rockman & Dorothy Spears in Conversation with Kurt Andersen
Join Alexis Rockman and Dorothy Spears in conversation with author Kurt Andersen at Belden House.
Naples: Course of Empire is a series of seven panoramic paintings by American artist Alexis Rockman inspired by Thomas Cole’s nineteenth-century cycle The Course of Empire. Executed in Rockman’s signature style of history painting, the works examine the long and fraught relationship between human civilization and the natural world.
With time itself as protagonist, this monograph of the same name will be released June 2026 and presents the entire development of the seven panoramic paintings in great detail. By connecting art history with pressing contemporary realities, climate science, and ecological collapse, the cycle paints a new picture of our civilization.
Rather than presenting history as linear progress, the cycle unfolds as recurrence: creation, eruption, collapse, and transformation repeating across vastly different scales of time. Alongside the paintings, the book presents Rockman’s field drawings made with volcanic material gathered directly from Mount Vesuvius. These works function as both studies and relics: records of direct contact between image and geology.
Together, they form a contemporary Course of Empire—in this case, not a moral allegory but an ecological one—where civilization is revealed as a brief, combustible phase within a far larger planetary story.
With an insightful essay written by Dorothy Spears, this master work provokes reflection and conversation.
Free with R.S.V.P. Guests will have the option to pre-purchase a copy of Naples: Course of Empire, or purchase a copy at the event from Hickory Stick Bookshop.
Alexis Rockman, a painter based in Warren, Connecticut, is an environmental activist who began making paintings and works on paper to build environmental awareness in the mid-1980s. Rockman’s work has been exhibited around the world and showcased at prestigious galleries and museums, such as the Venice Biennale, Carnegie Museum of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, and Serpentine Galleries.
Kurt Andersen is a writer whose fifth novel, The Breakup, will be published in August. His most recent books were Evil Geniuses and Fantasyland, and his work has been variously praised by critics as “ambitious and remarkable,” “dazzling,” “an absolute joy, “outrageously funny,” “stellar,” “a tour de force,” “a work of towering importance,” and “a great American novel.” He’s also a journalist, screenwriter and playwright. He contributes to The Atlantic and The New York Times, and was a staff writer and critic at The New Yorker and Time. He also hosted the Peabody Award-winning public radio show Studio 360, ran New York, and co-founded Spy magazine.
Dorothy Spears' career in the art world has spanned decades, beginning in the mid-1980s, when she worked at the legendary Leo Castelli Gallery, first as an archivist, and then co-directing the art dealer's space on Lower Broadway. She has just finished a memoir, Front Desk Girl, recounting her experience there. Over the intervening decades, Spears’ features and artist profiles appeared regularly in Art in America, ArtNews, The New York Times, Guggenheim Magazine, Gagosian Quarterly and many other magazines and newspapers. Her anthology, Flight Patterns: A Century of Stories about Flying,was published by Grove Press in 2009), and her essay, “Labor Day Weekend,” first published in Epiphany Magazine, received notice in Best American Essays. Over their 23 years together, Spears and Rockman have worked as a team, traveling to the far-reaches of the globe, from Tasmania, to Antarctica, to Madagascar, to Ecuador, and most recently, to Naples. Spears’ stories of their trips have appeared in Departures and New York Times, accompanied by Rockman’s artwork.
All photos courtesy Hirmer Publishers