Here’s a sampling of books published on the the subject within the last 12 months and beneficial by our writers, starting from a pleasant romp through the general public works of Paris to the intense issue of censorship and the forms it takes in today’s art world.
Loads of books in between, too, including the role of the art museum in contemporary society and reappraisals of unsung figures of art history, plus several works of fiction inspired by the art world. Add to that a tome by one among Artnet News’s own, Ben Davis, and also you’ll don’t have any shortage of fabric to dig into through the holidays and beyond. Joyful reading!
Museums and Wealth: The Politics of Contemporary Art Collections
By Nizan Shaked
On this fascinating and scholarly book, Shaked, professor of Contemporary Art History, Museum, and Curatorial Studies at California State University Long Beach, offers something like a unified theory of what ails museums today. Rigorously surveying the ability structures which have formed the fashionable museum “from the Medici to MoMA,” she argues that reforms throughout the museum are fatally hobbled by the unequal distribution of wealth that creates a patron class in the primary place. Whether or not her contention that efforts towards diversifying museum collections are completely doomed by this fact is completely true, Shaked’s book could be very priceless in taking the conversation beyond the purely moralistic place that it seems currently struck, to assist take into consideration “structural” change in a way that uses the word as greater than only a buzzword. Museums and Wealth ought to be the start line for discussions in regards to the problems of the museum going forward.
Jo van Gogh-Bonger: The Woman Who Made Vincent Famous
By Hans Luijten
You understand that old saying, behind every great man is an ideal woman? This incredibly granular account of the lifetime of Jo van Gogh-Bonger finally gives her the credit she deserves for tirelessly promoting the work of her brother-in-law Vincent van Gogh, helping transform him from a misunderstood failure into perhaps the world’s most famous artist. That she took on this lifelong task as a tribute to her late husband and great love, Theo—and succeeded as a lady working in a previously unfamiliar field—makes the story all of the more inspiring.
Nonconformers: A Latest History of Self-Taught Artists
By Lisa Slominski
What’s an “outsider artist” anyway? In response to writer Lisa Slominski, it’s a designation that encompasses a large swath of people: individuals with disabilities, people of color, and girls artists—all of whom have come up against the gatekeepers of cultural relevancy at a while or one other. In so many cases, that has proved useful in the long term, as so-called “outsider” or “self-taught” artists achieve international recognition, helping to shape the trajectory of latest art.
How one can Live with Objects: A Guide to More Meaningful Interiors
By Monica Khemsurov
After the Marie Kondo-inspired craze for purging unnecessary objects, this book is a welcome antidote to the concept that accumulating and appreciating stuff is bad. The cofounders of the net magazine Sight Unseen have created what Vanity Fair calls “the bible of recent home decor and elegance.” Amen!
A Few Collectors
By Pierre Le-Tan
This delightful illustrated book by the late Latest Yorker illustrator Pierre Le-Tan, translated into English for the primary time, is a love letter to each the fun and the eccentricities of collecting. In each chapter, he paints an image of a distinct collection he has personally encountered, from that of former Louvre Museum director Pierre Rosenberg to actor Peter Hinwood, of The Rocky Horror Picture Show fame. There’s great art, creepy dolls, and even a group of crumpled pieces of paper.
Art within the After-Culture: Capitalist Crisis and Cultural Strategy
By Ben Davis
Look, we’re biased. But don’t take our word for it: This collection of essays in regards to the radical changes rocking the art world by Artnet News’s own Ben Davis was a pick for 2022 Book of the Yr by Lisa Hilton within the Times Literary Complement and Holland Cotter within the Latest York Times. (In the event you can’t wait, Davis also did an episode in regards to the book’s tackle art and A.I., months before the topic took over the news, which you could take heed to now!)
From the Sculptor’s Studio: Conversations with 20 Seminal Artists
By Ina Cole
For the reason that days of monuments and statues, the art of creating sculpture has modified beyond recognition and its boundaries are still to today being challenged and reinvented. In a latest collection of interviews, 20 living sculptors, including Anthony Caro, Phyllida Barlow, Richard Long, Anish Kapoor, and Antony Gormley—each internationally renowned for leaving their very own indelible mark on sculpture—give fresh insight into their practices and the way they’ve come to define the art form.
Kiki Man Ray
By Mark Braude
The incredible life story of Kiki de Montparnasse is so unlikely, it almost reads like fiction. Born Alice Prin, the determined Kiki was just a young person when she realized posing for artists may very well be her avenue out of poverty. A muse to many—including her longtime romantic partner, the photographer Man Ray, with whom she collaborated on such groundbreaking images as Le Violon d’Ingres and Noire et blanche—Kiki became the guts and soul of the bohemian artist community of Left Bank Paris. Not only was she an artist model, she was a beloved singer, a successful memoirist, and an artist in her own right. The time is definitely ripe to revisit her legacy and the lasting influence she had on one of the essential art scenes of the Twentieth century, and to reconsider our preconceptions about artists and their muses.
Censored Art Today
By Gareth Harris
The longstanding debate around censorship in art has only been getting more fiery in recent times, as some decry “cancel culture” while others seek to redress offensive tropes or other inequities. On this latest survey, Gareth Harris shows us how the dispute plays out in a wide selection of contexts, from the toppling of old monuments in some places to government surveillance and the suppression of minority voices in others.
Art Is Life: Icons and Iconoclasts, Visionaries and Vigilantes, and Flashes of Hope within the Night
By Jerry Saltz
Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Jerry Saltz’s latest book is a compendium of a few of his best interviews, reviews, and musings on the art world; at its best, worst, and all the pieces in between, as this book proves, for Saltz, art truly is life.
Great Women Painters
By Linda Nochlin
Linda Nochlin’s 1971 essay “What Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” has been a much cited touchstone for each conversation about redressing the canon’s gender imbalance since. As this latest book shows, with its fresh have a look at the past, the query now not really stands. Covering over 300 artists, from major Renaissance names which have only recently been resuscitated from the history books to breakout stars of the ultra contemporary scene, and plenty of more Impressionists and modernists in between, the survey showcases a latest history of art that finally puts to bed any lingering doubts in regards to the pivotal role of girls painters.
Letters to Gwen John
By Cecilia Paul
In 2019, British painter Celia Paul began writing letters addressed to the late artist Gwen John, who lived from 1876 to 1939, but saw her own artistic accomplishments ignored in comparison with those of her brother, Augustus John, and her lover, Auguste Rodin. Paul has long been inspired by John, and compares their shared passion for art and artistic struggles on this intimate epistolary work.
How one can Construct Stonehenge
By Mike Pitts
In his heavily researched book, Mike Pitts examines the technical evidence to find out how the ancients would have built Stonehenge, the mysteries of which have fascinated people for generations. His take? Pitts believes the bluestones would have been transported tons of of miles overland from Wales via picket sledges on picket trackways, guided with poles. The larger sarsen slabs got here from only 17 miles away, but raising the stones into three-part trilithons probably required using logs to lever them into position.
Art Hiding in Paris: An Illustrated Guide to the Secret Masterpieces of the City of Light
By Lori Zimmer
In 2020, author Lori Zimmer and illustrator Maria Krasinski teamed up to provide a captivating volume celebrating ignored art in Latest York City’s public places. Their follow-up effort crosses the Atlantic to Paris to uncover works by the likes of Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, and Jean-Michel Othoniel in what amounts to a pleasant mashup of travel guide and art history.
Wild: The Lifetime of Peter Beard: Photographer, Adventurer, Lover
By Graham Boynton
In our post #MeToo world, Peter Beard doesn’t exactly come across just like the charming rapscallion writer Graham Boynton clearly thinks he’s. (In probably the most damning anecdote, Beard punches his wife Cheryl Tiegs within the stomach, causing a miscarriage.) However the photographer, who spent much of his life documenting African wildlife, was clearly a most singular individual, carving out a singular place within the art world, forsaking an enormous and bold body of labor despite his libertine lifestyle. Esteemed by collectors without, imagine it or not, a single museum show to his name, Beard never compromised his creative vision, pouring his literal blood, sweat, and tears into collaged works that pushed the boundaries of photography.
Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas
By Jennifer Raff
Archaeology and genetics come together on this book exploring the earliest human history within the Americas. Jennifer Raff makes a compelling case once and for all to disband with the once iron-clad Clovis first theory that the primary humans entered the continent at the top of the last ice age some 13,000 years ago, across the Bering Strait land bridge. As a substitute, the archaeological—and genetic—evidence points to a much earlier date, suggesting that the primary Americans had made their way down the coastal “Kelp Highway” as early as 22,000 years ago. Highlights include a transporting scene wherein Raff describes her work extracting DNA from old bones at a clean lab on the University of Kansas.
The Long Corner
By Alexander Maksik
When art-critic-turned-marketing-flack Solomon Fields gets invited to go to a paradisal artist colony and write about what its founder, Sebastian Light, is constructing there, it looks as if the proper escape from personal tragedy. However it quickly becomes clear that something will not be quite right within the Coded Garden, culminating within the resident artists’ eagerly awaited biennial and its unexpected aftermath. The novel is at turns comical, insightful, and unsettling, skewering the snobbery and cultishness of the art world while reconsidering the worth of so-called creative genius—and the ability of those that claim to foster it.
Blue Woman
By Jonathan Page
This beautiful novel brings to life the fictional Twentieth-century British artist Rose Hartwood. She overcomes having a baby out of wedlock and giving him up for adoption, and narrowly survives not one but two World War II bombing raids to realize renown for her paintings. The story unfolds too quickly, years flying by as Rose grows old and is forced to go away her legacy to the following generation.
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