The sinister and sublime, in transcendent watercolors. It is not uncommon for great artists to bring literary classics to pictorial life, from Picasso’s 1934 drawings for a naughty ancient Greek comedy toMatisse’s 1935 etchings for Ulysses to Salvador Dalí’s prolific illustrations forDon Quixote in 1946, the essays of Montaigne in 1947, Alice in Wonderlandin 1969, and Romeo &...

William Utermohlen’s self-portrait from 1967 British artist William Utermohlen was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 1995. Utermohlen decided to document the progression of the disease by doing self-portraits until he no longer remembered his own face. As terribly sad as these portraits are, they show how rapidly—and with such fury—Alzheimer’s can affect...