The Suspension of Time: Reflections on Simon Dinnerstein and the Fulbright Triptych

Completed in 1974, and standing over six feet tall and fourteen feet wide, The Fulbright Triptych is widely considered a masterpiece of contemporary art: a striking family tableau rendered in vivid detail on three wood panels, which has quietly inspired, exhorted, and challenged its viewers for years.

The Suspension of Time is a collection of essays on Simon Dinnerstein’s extraordinary painting, reproduced here in full color. It includes writing by singularly rich range of contributors, from the Pulitzer Prize–winning novelists Jhumpa Lahiri and Anthony Doerr to acclaimed poet Dan Beachy-Quick, and from art historians such as Colin Eisler, Albert Boime, and Thomas M. Messer to composer George Crumb and actor John Turturro.

Each essay in The Suspension of Time offers its unique perspective, but taken as a whole they develop a dialogue of collaboration that directly reflects The Fulbright Triptych’s inherent message of symphonic connectivity, demonstrating the rich potential for collaboration between visual, literary, musical, and other arts.

"Simon Dinnerstein's Fulbright Triptych is one of those singular and astonishing works of art which seem to imply a description of the whole world merely by insisting on a scrupulous gaze at one perfect instant. It functions as a time capsule and a mirror for its viewers' souls, and so, despite personal and historical referential elements, has become permanently contemporary and universal. No surprise that it has now served as a point of instigation for a cycle of astonishing written responses; this book is like tuning the painting in like a radio, to a station where these responses were always already playing."
—Jonathan Lethem

"In The Suspension of Time, Dinnerstein continues the life of "A". Being an artist, yet also recognizing oneself as the protagonist in an artist's project, must evoke curious and complex feelings - not unlike seeing oneself turn or being turned into a character in a novel."
—J.M. Coetzee