12 of the Best New Books About Art to Read Over the Holidays, From a Painter’s Memoir to a Survey of Artists’ Steamy Affairs

If you’ve got some free time over the holidays, there’s nothing
like curling up with a good book. In honor of the season, here’s a
selection of our favorite art books from 2019.

A Feast for the Eyes: Edible Art From Apples to
Zucchini by Carolyn Tillie (2019)

Maurizio Cattelan’s now-infamous banana is
hardly the only work of art made from literal foodstuffs. In artist
Carolyn Tillie’s gorgeously illustrated A Feast for the
Eyes, she considers the role of art in the full span of art
history, from prehistoric paintings done on the inside of
eggshells, to elaborately crafted Renaissance banquets with
extravagant sugar centerpieces. But the heart of this little
volume—or should I say the gut?—is the incredible alphabetical
rundown of artworks made from all types of edible ingredients, such
as Vik Muniz’s caviar Frankenstein (2004) and Blake
Little’s viral photographs of models dripping in
honey. (Bizarrely omitted? Kara Walker’s seminal sugar
sphinx.)

Come the Morning by Jeannie Burt
(2019)

A work of historical fiction featuring Robert Henri (1865–1929), one of
the leaders of the Ashcan School, Come the Morning is
the story of how hardworking orphan Ezekiel Harrington,
through his childhood friendship with the artist, accidentally
becomes the owner of a Philadelphia art gallery. It’s the sequel to
2018’s The Seasons of Doubt, which was about
Ezekiel’s mother’s struggles to support herself without a husband.
Ezekiel is somewhat of a challenging character in his stubborn
independence, but the book paints a fascinating picture of an
American art world in its infancy, with wealthy patrons contrasted
with ambitious artists rebelling against the constraints of the
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.

The Grandest Madison Square Garden: Art,
Scandal, and Architecture in Gilded Age New York by
Suzanne Hinman (2019)

Suzanne Hinman’s deeply researched account of the building of
the second Madison Square Garden by architectural firm McKim, Mead
& White transports readers to the surprisingly salacious Gilded
Age. Consider the tangled romantic lives of the men involved:
married artist Augustus Saint-Gaudens, sculptor of the
building’s famed nude statue of the goddess Diana, penned love
letters to architects Stanford White and Joseph Wells, while having
a child with his mistress. And then there’s the tale’s
denouement, the so-called “trial of the century,” after
White was murdered during a performance at Madison Square Garden.
Harry Kendall Thaw claimed the crime was revenge for White’s affair
with Thaw’s wife, the young actress Evelyn Nesbit, but Hinman
suggests that the two men may have had a romantic falling out of
their own.

Metropolitan Stories: A Novel by
Christine Coulson (2019)

This pleasantly quirky and surprisingly magical
behind-the-scenes look at life at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
brings the institution’s encyclopedic collection to life—literally,
with artworks that live and breathe and tell stories of their own.
A figure from a Tinteretto underpainting sneaks out to work at the
museum cafeteria; a marble statue of Adam longs to break free of
his pedestal. The novel features a series of interconnected
vignettes that are by turns heartwarming, amusing, and
thought-provoking. This gem of a book speaks to the universality of
art, telling the stories of a security guard, a lonely widow, and a
newly unemployed insurance salesman, among others, as they cross
paths with the greatest museum in the world.

Twentieth-Century Boy: Notebooks of the
Seventies by Duncan Hannah (2019)

This year saw the paperback release of painter Duncan Hannah’s
journals, written when he was a young man in New York between 1970
and 1981. Populated by such legendary figures as Patti Smith, David
Hockney, Lou Reed, and Rene Ricard, the pages capture the downtown
art and music scene of the 1970s in remarkable fashion. Driven by
overindulgence—the book’s periodic lists of movies watched, books
read, and concerts attended are nothing short of amazing, given the
author’s hard-partying ways—Hannah is a total cad, but his sexual
misadventures are undeniably entertaining, and you can’t help but
root for him despite it all.

Artemisia by Alex Connor
(2019)

As a 17-year-old, the great Baroque painter Artemisia
Gentileschi famously took her painting-teacher-turned-rapist to
trial, enduring torture under oath in her quest for justice. But
aside from those harrowing court records, there are few firsthand
accounts of her life. Art historian Alexandra Conor has
imaginatively filled in the gaps with this surprisingly suspenseful
novel that jumps back and forth between Gentileschi’s career in
Rome and the present day, where, in London, a woman inherits
unpublished papers that reveal the artist’s involvement with
unscrupulous art dealers and collectors. This is one to read ahead
of Gentileschi’s highly anticipated 2020 show at London’s National
Gallery.

The Art of Love: The Romantic and Explosive
Stories Behind Art’s Greatest Couples by Kate Bryan and
Asli Yazan (2019)

It’s fitting that The Art of Love, which
celebrates some of the art world’s greatest creative couples, is
itself a collaborative work. Asli Yazan’s stunning portraits
illustrate Kate Bryan’s biographical texts about the relationships
between Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera; Camille Claudel and August
Rodin; and Laurie Simmons and Carroll Dunham, to name just a few of
the 34 featured pairs. Spanning nearly 140 years and 13 countries,
some of these loves stood the test of time; others went up in
flames, like the affair between Marina Abramoviç and Ulay.

A History of Art in 21 Cats by Nia
Gould (2019)

A delight for art history nerds and cat lovers alike, A
History of Art in 21 Cats is exactly that: a rundown of major
art periods, from the Renaissance and Rococo eras, to Cubism and
Pop Art, with cats prominently featured. Each clever feline
illustration is packed with art-historical references. The
Surrealist cat wears a René Magritte bowler hat, with an apple in
front of its face, while the Young British Artist example is posed
inside a Damien Hirst formaldehyde tank.

I’ve Seen the Future and I’m Not Going: The Art
Scene and Downtown New York in the 1980s by Peter McGough
(2019)

Few stories in the history of the AIDS crisis are as singular as
Peter McGough’s. Best known as one half of the artist duo McDermott
& McGrough, the artist rose to fame alongside his artistic and life
partner making paintings, photographs, and interiors that
transported visitors to the Victorian era. McGrough’s memoir traces
their antics in the downtown art scene alongside Andy Warhol, Keith
Haring, and other legendary figures. But it also charts their
descent into poverty, the 1987 stock market crash, and the brutal
AIDS epidemic. As a whole, the book is a powerful portrait of one
hell of a life led during one of the most artistically vibrant—and
devastating—eras of New York’s art history.

Invisible Colors: The Arts of the Atomic
Age by Gabrielle Decamous (2019)

Gabrielle Decamous takes a broad look at the way that artists
around the world have responded to nuclear power, from the
experiments of Marie Curie to the Fukushima disaster of 2011, in
art forms as varied as literature, film, music, anime, photography,
and painting. The book is vast in scope and yet intimate in scale,
and considers personal responses to the atomic bomb from those who
survived the blasts in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The book includes
rarely seen photos of the bombings and artistic responses from the
people of Oceania, whose homelands tragically became test sites for
this deadly technology.

Exotic: A Fetish for the Foreign by
Judy Sund (2019)

Judy Sund considers the Western world’s obsession, dating to the
Age of Exploration, with all things exotic, and how foreign objects
from faraway lands become markers of sophistication and taste. From
Britain’s 18th-century obsession with tea to the seemingly
inexhaustible appetite for all things from ancient Egypt, Sund
considers how the lure of distant cultures has persisted over the
centuries, with once-exotic tattoos, tulips, and elephants becoming
commonplace and familiar. In our increasingly globalized world, the
book serves as a fascinating reminder of how art has served as a
tool of cultural assimilation.

Guestbook: Ghost Stories by Leanne
Shapton (2019)

Artist Leanne Shapton’s latest book is a masterclass in visual
storytelling, combining found photographs and original paintings
with prose and poetry to create a loosely bound set of ghostly
encounters. Some chapters, including a poem composed seemingly of
Instagram comments (“this is goals,” “where can I find that
dress?!”) hint at social media as a malevolent force driving
our growing sense of isolation. The book lacks a clear narrative
thread, but there’s something undeniably compelling about Shapton’s
thoughtful juxtapositions between words and images, which makes the
book a unique page turner.

The post 12 of the Best New Books About Art to Read Over the
Holidays, From a Painter’s Memoir to a Survey of Artists’ Steamy
Affairs appeared first on artnet News.