10 Best Art Books for Summer Reading
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Loading... - Lucas Wilson
- 29 Jul 2022
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Reading is as essential to summer as swimming, camping, and partying under the stars — a perfect way to while away the hours on the sand or in your own backyard.
For art lovers vacationing far from galleries or museums, nothing beats a good book on art to get a dose of aesthetic (or mental) stimulation. But picking through the dozens (hundreds!) of new titles published so far this year to find the best art books worth your time can be exhausting. That’s why we’ve done the work — combing through catalogs and best seller lists for the best of the best.
We’ve gathered 10 art-related titles including exhibition catalogs, compilations of critical writings, and artist biographies. Whether it’s a dishy new history on artist Marcel Duchamp, a tumultuous biography of painter Francis Bacon in the form of a graphic novel, or a stunning collection of previously unseen photographs by iconoclast Ray Johnson, there’s a book for every type of art lover.
Take a look at our current favorites below, cnjoy, and don’t forget the sunscreen.
1
Joel Smith, ed., Please Send to Real Life: Ray Johnson Photographs
Perennially described as “the most famous unknown artist,” Ray Johnson (1927–1995) was a congenial fixture on the city’s art scene during the 1950s and ’60s. A fervid collagist, Johnson was a pioneer of mail art and was considered a precursor to Pop Art because his work incorporated cartoonish figuration and images of Elvis and James Dean. He was also a committed eccentric, so much so that his death by drowning in the waters off Sag Harbor, Long Island, has been construed as a final act of performance art. (He was last seen backstroking out into Sag Harbor Bay, never to return.)
Although Johnson stopped exhibiting in 1991, he went on to create a largely unknown body of photographs over the next few years that make their print debut in his book. Though photography wasn’t new for Johnson, these images are distinguished by their snapshot quality. stemming from his use of disposable cameras—some 137 in all.
Taken in and around his home in Locust Valley, the photos feature his previous works in outdoor settings. Poignant at times—as in a cutout of his profile propped up on a beach, which seems to prefigure his fate—the work exudes the idiosyncratic charm that defined Johnson’s art and life.
2
Ann Temkin, Dorthe Aagesen, Matisse: The Red Studio
This catalog for a 2020 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art recounts the backstory of one of the jewels in its collection: Henri Matisse’s The Red Studio (1911). A view of the artist’s atelier in the suburb of Issy-les-Moulineaux, the painting shows a group of his works arrayed against the room’s walls, which Matisse has rendered here in unmodulated Venetian red.
Rather than being pictured in progress, these works are complete, marking The Red Studio as a summa of Matisse’s career up to that point. Originally commissioned, and later rejected, by the textile magnate Sergei Shchukin, the canvas remained in the artist’s hands for decades and prompted hostile critical reaction during the few times it was exhibited (including an appearance at the 1913 Amory Show).
In 1927 The Red Studio entered the unlikely possession of David Tennant, a nightclub owner who hung it in his establishment as a backdrop for evenings of Jazz Age revelry. In 1938 Tennant offered to sell the painting back to Matisse, who declined his overture. After being briefly owned by the gallerist George Keller, it finally entered MoMA’s collection in 1948—leaving behind a tale that’s no less fascinating than the painting itself.
3
Hilton Als, et al., (Nothing But) Flowers
“Say It With Flowers” used to be the slogan for FTD, but it might as well have been the title of this publication accompanying a 2022 exhibition of the same name at Karma, a gallery/bookstore in the East Village. Featuring texts by Hilton Als, David Rimanelli, and Helen Molesworth, the book is a collection of paintings by 59 artists—as varied as Charles Burchfield, Alex Katz, Lois Dodd, and Amy Sillman—who use floral motifs to explore a range of themes and ambiences running the gamut between breezy and brooding, couched in an equally wide variety of styles from realism to abstraction.
Highlights include Sanya Kantarovsky’s eerie rendering of a gaunt, reanimated cadaver on a serene riverbank contemplating a wilting sunflower, Henni Alftan’s requiem for a broken aster drooping in a glass vase, Katz’s blazing arrangement of bright orange blossoms against a pink backdrop, Peter Doig’s snaking array of lemons hanging from a bough, and Sillman’s series of washy botanical studies on paper. Spanning still life, landscape, and allegorical scenes, the images in this compact catalog express our collective fascination with flowers and the ways in which their fugitive beauty mirrors the fleeting nature of life. Read More...
