Touching the Art

by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

A daringly observant memoir about intergenerational trauma, fine art, and compartmentalization from a returning Soft Skull author and Lambda Literary Award winner

A mixture of memoir, biography, criticism, and social history, Touching the Art is queer icon and activist Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore’s interrogation of the possibilities of artistic striving, the limits of the middle-class mindset, the legacy of familial abandonment, and what art can and cannot do.

Taking the form of a self-directed research project, Sycamore recounts the legacy of her fraught relationship with her late grandmother, an abstract artist from Baltimore who encouraged Mattilda as a young artist, then disparaged Mattilda’s work as “vulgar” and a “waste of talent” once it became unapologetically queer.

As she sorts through her grandmother Gladys’s paintings and handmade paperworks, Sycamore examines the creative impulse itself. In fragments evoking the movements of memory, she searches for Gladys’s place within the trajectories of midcentury modernism and Abstract Expressionism, Jewish assimilation and white flight, intergenerational trauma and class striving.

Sycamore writes, “Art is never just art, it is a history of feeling, a gap between sensations, a safety valve, an escape hatch, a sudden shift in the body, a clipboard full of flowers, a welcome mat flipped over and back, over and back, welcome.”

Refusing easy answers in search of an embodied truth, Sycamore upends propriety to touch the art and feel everything that comes through.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Art, Queer, LGBT, Family, Jewish

304 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 7, 2023

About the author

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore is the award-winning author of The Freezer Door, a New York Times Editors’ Choice, one of Oprah Magazine’s Best LGBTQ Books of 2020, and a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award. Winner of a Lambda Literary Award and an American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book, she’s the author of three novels and three nonfiction titles, and the editor of six nonfiction anthologies, most recently Between Certain Death and a Possible Future: Queer Writing on Growing Up with the AIDS Crisis. Sycamore lives in Seattle, and her new book, Touching the Art, will be released on November 7, 2023.

Reviews

[endrju · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore's work is always demanding but in the best possible way. Here, Sycamore writes about her grandmother who was an artist sharing the time and space with the Cold War neo-avant-garde. But at the same time this book is so much more. Sycamore writes: I want a history of everything that was never recorded, an all the records that have been lost. I want a history of everything left unsaid. Everything that never happened, but should have happened. (p. 200) It is about gender politics, sexual politics, racial politics and how these relate to the art. It is about the role of art since: Once art is canonized, it becomes an instrument of war. Think about the legendary misogynist men of Abstract Expressionism, blasting away at their canvases to claim a place in history. (p. 155)

It is also about what art does and about spaces where art does what it does. Writing about Ryan Trecatrin's installation: ... I mean this is actual footage of drunk straight boys smashing mailboxes with a sledgehammer, throwing TVs out of speeding cars, pulling a flag off a lawn and burning it, and is this porn, I mean it might be porn for me... Sitting on the sofa in this museum, I wonder if anyone's going to have sex here. The lights are dim, we're watching porn, are you ready? (p. 145) Indeed, it is about touching the art: But shouldn't I be naked and pressing my lips to the paint to see what I can feel, or rolling on the carpet to experience the movement in the painting - how does the body remember the body? (p. 140)

These questions are never easy to ponder since they relate to relations of power that permeate societies and often their workings pass unknowledged, and Sycamore's book goes even further. She faces her Jewish family's implication in racist politics against the Blacks, as well as in homophobia and silence over sexual abuse. As Sycamore writes: I'm not trying to write a history and yet I'm caught. In the sudden overlap of knowledge. What this might reveal. (p. 270)

[Jessica Ranard · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love all of Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore's writing. The reason why: her queerness is mirrored in her writing style, how all of her writing is both/and, how its never just one style, specifically how Touching the Art is a mix of memoir/commentary/criticism/history/art history. In Touching the Art, Mattilda writes about her relationship to her grandmother Glady's who was an artist in Baltimore, who at first inspired Mattilda's interest in art, and then when Mattilda's interest in art became 'too queer', called it "vulgar." Here, she writes about Glady's art and Glady's own personal life history, Mattilda's relationship to Glady's, Gladys' art and art in general, city life, middle class norms, white Jewish flight, how art can expand everything, among many other themes and subjects. Mattilda's writing is like looking through kaleidescope when kaleidescopes were first invented, thinking "what is this" and "I need to look at this again." Deeply thoughtful and expansive.

[Tina · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved reading TOUCHING THE ART by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore! This memoir explores the author’s relationship with her late grandmother, Gladys Goldstein, who was a prolific artist. Sycamore delves into the past to when Gladys was growing up, getting married and becoming a noted painter in Baltimore. I loved the writing style which was almost like journal entries as we discover memories, more about Gladys and Sycamore’s interactions to produce this book. Sycamore returns to Baltimore to write this book and visits the Baltimore Museum of Art so I thought it would be perfect to visit the Vancouver Art Gallery again to take my bookstagram pic of this book. I loved how Sycamore showed the importance of Gladys’s friendships from her childhood friend Helen, to her neighbours Joel and Norma and her artist friend Keith Martin. This quote “Writing a book is about letting everything in.” encapsulates how this book is more than a memoir. It also has parts of history, biography and critical essay. I also loved this quote “And what is the point of a painting in a collection if no one sees it?” and this quote from Gladys “I can’t keep repeating the same thing over and over again…I have to change, and I have to think.” which shows how important art is in both of their lives.

Thank you to Soft Skull Press for my gifted review copy!

[Alyson · Rating 5 out of 5]

So much to love about this book, and it's a wonderful study of Baltimore and all that is hard to parse about one's life, gentrified cities, art history, and family members we can never fully know when writing a memoir.

Quotes I underlined:
"But I'm guessing the house wouldn't be standing today-not much of that neighborhood is still standing.
What is, and what is not a project of whiteness."

"I'm trying to imagine what it would have been like to grow up in Baltimore in the 1920s, right near the dividing line between white and Black. How rigid was that line? And I realize that Billie Holiday was raised in Baltimore. She was born in Philadelphia in 1915, two years before Gladys. Her mother brought her to Baltimore by the end of that year, and she lived there until she was thirteen or fourteen. In her memoir, she says that in Baltimore, "A whorehouse was about the only place where black and white folks could meet in any natural way."
This tells me everything.
Jazz was labeled "whorehouse music," in part because of the threat of racial mixing. When Billie Holiday heard Louis Armstrong playing on the Victrola at the whorehouse on the corner as a child, she was transfixed. "It was the first time I ever heard anybody sing without using any words," she says.

[Shadib Bin · Rating 5 out of 5]

2nd Read / Review 5/5 (August 2025)

I remember fondly of this book. And to reread it again, I am realizing just how much this has aged like fine wine. Mattilda continues to be one of my absolute favorite, and this deep exploration of art, her queerness, race, family and so much more - is some of her very best writings. Just a phenomenal, meditative book that I hope to continue to revisit as I grow older.


—-

Original Review December 2023

4/5

Touching the Art by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

Ever since I first came across her work while strolling through the The Strand in New York back in January 2023, The End of San Francisco, I have been deeply in love with her work and thinking. Mattilda is challenging, yet her clarity about what she wants of herself and those around her is something I find quite inspiring and intentional. This book follows in the same vein - this time around about her grandmother, Gladys Goldstein, and Baltimore, Maryland. The premise loosely starts with Mattilda’s confusion as to why Gladys slowly took away her support towards her, being a prominent Baltimore abstract artist herself, as Mattilda matured into a queer artist along the years.

Throughout exploration of Gladys own artwork, I found Mattilda quite balanced in her critique about Gladys, both the great (how Gladys seems to always been focused on her art, and always interested to reinvent her work within the world of abstract), the confounding (Gladys support of Mattilda in her early days of being a queer artist, to eventually ripping out all the support along the way and stopped engaging with Mattilda’s art - ending up suggesting that the art is vulgar, along with her own withdrawal from the art world and into obscurity), and in between the more agitating (Gladys inclination to shift away from where she grew up, because there was more black people moving into the area, and the racist undertones she exhibited - a trait that seems inherited and lived in without wanting to confront across the years of her existence).

Throughout it all, Mattilda, although recollecting painful moments, never seem to lose composure. It’s evident just how much work she has done to be able to revisit such places without crumbling and instead see things as they were - and think through what could have happened had people - like Gladys - be more open minded as they have been in certain parts of their lives (e.g. towards her art making, towards even her early love to Mattilda as she grew up). Mattilda isn’t asking for much, her revisionist history feels quite achievable- yet the current times we live in, it seems like she is asking for the world.

The book meanders - all the better for it. Some writers lose the grip when meandering - yet under Mattilda’s hands, they feel alive - explaining Baltimores art scene, about how areas of a certain places get their rapport due to just how racism and class comes into collision, about digging into artists who may have influenced Gladys - directly or not - Grace Hartigan, Keith Martin and staying with these threads that really paint a big picture. These meanderings allow the reader to see the full facet of what Mattilda, Gladys, Baltimore are all facing - their own doing and the structural considerations that they are up against.

Mattilda never quite figures out why Gladys slowly took away her love and engagement with Mattilda’s work. There are some underbelly considerations - such as not wanting to acknowledge Keith Martin - someone she admired, was gay. There seems to be this tension of not wanting to acknowledge differences that anyone who has experienced it personally - can connect with Mattilda’s observations in this book - and it’s always painful. Props to Mattilda for marching forward in her endlessly giving book - about a future that could circumnavigate these pitfalls.

I loved the book. My third book by her this year - and what a treat.

[Bee · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars. This books is a meandering sequence of observations, reflections, and research about art, queerness, and community. Throughout, Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore muses about the paradoxical and sometimes cyclical nature of art that creates symbiotic relationships between humans and their creations. Embedded deeply in the narrative is historical context about Baltimore, Maryland - its art scene, its legacy of structural racism - and attempts to reconcile the lessons for future generations of artists.

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore introduces us to her grandmother, the Baltimore artist Gladys Goldstein, and their relationship becomes larger than life in the context of her work. Through the paradoxes of life, love, and creation, Bernstein Sycamore describes the sensory experiences of art that frame her questions. What is the purpose of art, if not to be touched? What roles did Gladys play in the personal homophobia and victim-blaming that Bernstein Sycamore experienced in her familial relationships? How was Gladys, a Jewish woman, complicit in the white flight and racism in the city that came to claim her as an artist?

These slow and dreamy ponderings, weaved in among queer canon references, create artistic dialogues and an entirely unique historical narrative. Bernstein Sycamore challenges us to get up close and personal to artwork, to expand our definitions of art. When we can contextually and critically assess art and culture, perhaps we can improve the world.

[Gwen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore touches a lot more than the art with this memoir. In it, she looks back at her relationship with her grandmother, a significant visual artist in her own right. The author approaches her own grandmother as a researcher, setting out to try to understand the closeness they felt, the influence on their own life as a creative artist, but also why her queer identity became a bridge too far for her grandmother to cross with her. This is a brave book, fearlessly searching for clarity that is hard to come by.

[Jacob Wren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some passages from Touching the Art:


*


“And how this happened for me too – twenty years ago, when my chronic pain first became debilitating and I couldn’t write like I used to, in frantic bursts trying to get everything out. So I decided to write a few sentences a day, with no intention of plot or structure, and after a few years I was shocked to find I had over four hundred pages. And that text became my second novel.”


*


“How music always carries the memory of when you first heard this music. How this can be a burden. How this can be glorious. How this can be suffocating. How this can make you shake. How this can make you sing. How this can make you dance. And this can be true of visual art too.

Sometimes, when the CD skips, I think maybe I should stop listening to CDs. And sometimes, when the CD skips, I think this is what it feels like to really love something.”


*


“Gladys saw herself as a contemporary artist, so she didn’t want to be defined by the past. She wanted her art to be considered on its own. But then Bobby wrote the catalog copy, and she rejected it. So someone else was hired to write it.

Bobby says Gladys was not a risk-taker, she was fiercely competitive with herself and how she saw herself among Baltimore artists, but she turned her back on the professional art establishment, and after that she didn’t pursue a professional career, and you can’t expect the world to come to you. She enjoyed the process of painting, and put that above anything else.

Like many artists of her generation, Bobby says, Gladys made the mistake of thinking that genius will be discovered.”


*


“When someone asks what is your writing process, I think it must be to try and try and then finally, in the gap between the limits of my body and the possibility of pulling something through, somewhere in that gap—"


*


“Maybe a different way to say history repeats itself would be to say history never resolves itself. History is a lesson, this may be true, but, as with any other lesson, the people who need it the most rarely listen.”


*

[Delia Rainey · Rating 5 out of 5]

such a transformative and complex book, everything i want from nonfiction, from art. in reading this, i realize how mattilda should’ve been the executor of gladys’ archives. this book is an unearthing of art practice, history, women artists and abstract art in america, baltimore, family, jewish white assimilation and heteronormativity, and contradictions of a person. as with gladys’ collage works, the writing becomes a conversation with the media it pulls from. i love how writing (and reading) a book is a way to (finally) be close to a person.

“When you allow your work to express what you see, sometimes your work expresses more than you know.”

“”As the painting changes,” she says, “you change with it. You start with one idea, and then something else happens.””

“Confiscation as a tool for imagination — to steal from the dead, in order to make something alive.”

“If one doesn’t want to be one’s own history, does it become someone else’s?”

[Gwyneth Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book extremely interesting. Sycamore takes a journalistic approach to uncover her relationship with her grandmother and how her grandmothers past, notably growing up in amidst segregation shaped her grandmothers relationships. Not only did I appreciate the approach, but I finished this book with a deeper understanding of our environment and how racially discriminatory housing policy has shaped cities across the country. This history, in combination of a review of her grandmother’s art forms a narrative about how our environment shapes our relationships.

[Leah Rachel von Essen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Touching the Art by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore is a memoir, biography, and exploration. Sycamore, a genderqueer writer, learned how to make art from her grandmother, a contemporary artist in Baltimore. And yet, once Mattilda grew up, to her disappointment, her queerness and her open confrontation of her father, who abused her at a young age, came between them, obscuring them from one another. Now, after the grandmother's death, Mattilda tries to do what her grandmother taught her, and make art by not just looking, but looking ever-closer, digging in. She writes about her grandmother's life and art, tries to unpack her grandmother's psyche, and tries to access a closure that she's not sure is possible.

Sycamore's writing is vivid and evocative, and I felt pulled into the scenes she described, felt like I too grew to know her grandmother in all her complexity. Some of the work Sycamore did about Baltimore the city, certain museums, could feel like tangents. At other times, things repeated, or felt somewhat circular. But that's because Sycamore is circling around something she can never truly access: the mind of a woman she knew intimately but could never fully understand. Every once in a while, the writing could become a little confusing grammatically, as if it was written down as notes or stream-of-consciousness, which was distracting. But overall this was an emotional, deep story of a person trying to find their place in the world, from family history to the artist legacy that helped raise them.

Content warnings for incest, sexual assault, homophobia/transphobia, racism, disordered eating.

[Patrica Montazeri · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't think I would like this book when I started to read. It was a good book after all. A great memoir of her grandmother with insight of what was happening during her grandmother's surroundings. I'm sure her grandmother would be very proud of her granddaughter.

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

best thing i have read this year, it’s like it was made for me. art, queers, baltimore, difficult family dynamics, understanding the racist origins of our cities. i will recommend to everyone. ty, mattilda for writing this.

[Kel · Rating 4 out of 5]

always happy to read a new book by mattilda bernstein sycamore (although I am a bit late the game on this) - her books are so full of emotion and insight and I seek them out (or reread) when I'm needing a certain kind of queer kinship that I always find in her writing.

[Kailin · Rating 3 out of 5]

So wide ranging, but the connection of art to family, history, friendship, culture, urban planning, social movements, gentrification, queer identities is really considered here. Mattilda does her research!

[Rae · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not an easy read but unique in how the threads of other artists are used to experience her Grandmother's paintings. I was drawn to this book because Johanna Hedva referenced it in their essay collection.

[Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a beautiful book. In so many ways.