For the first time, a comprehensive study is devoted to the fictional art critic Madame Realism. This creation of U.S. critic and writer Lynne Tillman drifts between fact and fiction, between New York City and its environs, artworks and their contexts. In the midst of self-reflection, sensory overload, and a male-dominated art world, Madame Realism reexamines the position a looking and writing subject can take. Who recognizes himself in art, and why? The question of representation that Madame Realism raises and explores has lost none of its presentness. The art scholar and art critic Isabel Mehl examines the interplay between criticism and imagination in the Madame Realism stories and shows what it means to practice fiction as a critical form of thinking.