8 Art Books You Need to Read
If one of your New Year’s goals is to venture into the realm of reading for pleasure, look no further than our top picks tackling new perspectives in art this year. Through a mix of historical and contemporary themes, these 8 books confront the underlying social structures that affect the art world and its creations. Topics centered around the practice of collecting, the making of visual culture, art crime, colonialism, and more stir up new and invigorating conversations surrounding the art world and those who operate within it.
Vermeer's Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World
Timothy Brook’s Vermeer’s Hat offers insight into the rapidly expanding world Vermeer inhabited through 6 works by the artist. Tracing the trade routes that led to globalization in the seventeenth century, Brooks suggests the concept of globalization is not so modern. Through the lens of Dutch still life, portraits, and maps, Brooks explores the movement of people and goods and their lasting impact.
The Secret Lives of Color leads readers on a journey through time and art, hunting down the origins of acid yellow to kelly green, explaining artists’ obsessions with color as well as her own. Ultimately an anthropological study of human culture, Kassia St. Clair reveals the secret lives and roles of colors in visual media, politics, art, science, and more. Through 75 different essays profiling a variety of shades and hues, St. Clair encourages readers to experience our social history through a unique lens.
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
Malcolm Gladwell’s second book, Blink, presents a scientific approach to understanding the adaptive unconscious and mental processes that happen in an instant- leaving readers to reevaluate how they make decisions every day. By redefining how we understand ourselves, Gladwell teaches us about the mechanisms that exist within that aren’t as simple as we may think. Profiling both the pros and cons of the adaptive unconscious, Blink attempts to demystify the human elements behind mental processes like expert judgments, prejudices, and stereotypes.
Available for pre-order, this is one book we are very excited to get our hands on. Katy Hessel’s The Story of Art Without Men is relatively self-explanatory, as the founder of @thegreatwomenartists profiles women artists of history as well as answers questions of who makes art history, and how women worked as artists before the modern age. Hessel refocuses and recontextualizes art history as it has never been done before, expanding the canon and including the female artists who were overlooked and ignored in their own time. From the Renaissance to post-war Latin America, Hessel redefines art history as we know it.
Art Is Life: Icons and Iconoclasts, Visionaries and Vigilantes, and Flashes of Hope in the Night
Jerry Saltz’s Art is Life surveys the relationship between contemporary art and major cultural milestones as well as how cultural conventions have been challenged by art. As an art critic, Saltz’s witty and truthful commentary urges readers to explore and appreciate the artists who have been on the edge of cultural shifts, whether that be Kara Walker or Jasper Johns. Through conversational language, Saltz eases readers into breakdowns in the intricacies of modern art, artists, art history, and the future of the discipline.
The Art of Forgery: The Minds, Motives and Methods of Master Forgers
In The Art of Forgery, Noah Charney outlines the methods, motivations, and dramas of master forgers, both in the past and today. Charney details famous forgeries and forgers, weaving the relationships of key players and their personal lives into the story, making it that much easier to understand why forgeries exist at all. Divided by motivations (pride, revenge, money, fame, etc.), the book is designed to examine the why and how of the practice, as well as its larger social and political implications. Although forgers are largely considered malicious in their intent, Charney breaks down the human actions that reframe forgeries as crimes of opportunity.
The only book on our list to come with a warning, Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch features a dazzling story to pull you into the darker side of art and wealth but will leave art conservators in a panic with details of improper storage, packaging, and restoration work. Centered around 13-year-old Theodore Decker, The Goldfinch follows Decker and the rapid changes in his life after surviving an attack at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that kills his mother and makes him the owner of Carel Fabritius’ painting of a goldfinch. Winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, Tartt crafts a unique coming-of-age story that inhabits the artistic underworld.
Possession: The Curious History of Private Collectors from Antiquity to the Present
A deep dive into the history of collecting, Erin L. Thompson’s Possession answers questions of why we feel the urge to collect, what ownership over art really means, and what elements of the process should be recontextualized. Through art historical anecdotes, personal experiences, and an examination of art crime, Thompson reveals the historical conditions that led us to the tangled and complex world of art and antiquities we see today.
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