Anna Ostoya and Ben Lerner's 'The Polish Rider' explores fiction's role in art creation

Anna Ostoya and Ben Lerner collaborated on 'The Polish Rider', a publication blending fiction, criticism, and visual art. The project originated from a story Ostoya told Lerner about leaving two canvases in a New York taxi before an opening. Lerner responded with a short story published in The New Yorker in 2016, imagining a detective quest to recover the lost artworks. This fictional narrative features a narrator resembling Lerner and an artist character named 'Sonia'. The book includes Lerner's essay titled 'Late Art', reproductions of Ostoya's work, and a painting she created in response to his writing. Published by Mack in January & February 2019, the hardcover costs €35, £30, or $40. The work examines how language shapes art's legibility and explores ekphrastic writing's power dynamics. It questions whether literary prose can authentically engage with visual art without asserting superiority. References to Rembrandt's painting 'The Polish Rider' (c. 1650) and a 1993 New Yorker spoof add layers of art historical playfulness. The collaboration demonstrates fiction's potential to stage encounters between different media forms.