Art books go meta this season with more than a few big titles on artists who make, read, or collect books.
Top 10
Avedon: Something Personal
Norma Stevens and Steven M.L. Aronson. Random/Spiegel & Grau, Nov. 21
An intimate written account of Richard Avedon, the influential fashion photographer, from by Stevens, his longtime business partner.
Calder: The Conquest of Time: The Early Years: 1898–1940
Jed Perl. Knopf, Oct. 31
Art critic Perl shows why Alexander Calder was—and remains—a groundbreaker and an avant-garde artist with mass appeal.
Delirious: Art at the Limits of Reason, 1950–1980
Kelly Baum, Lucy Bradnock, and Tina Rivers Ryan. Yale Univ., Oct. 10
This provocative catalogue looks at absurd, eccentric, and disorienting works of art from the 1950s to the ’80, and asks, can postwar art be understood as an exercise in calculated insanity?
France Is a Feast: Paul and Julia Child’s Photographic Journey
Alex Prud’homme and Katie Pratt. Thames & Hudson, Oct. 10
A collection of more than 200 photos of Julia Child’s life in Paris, taken by her husband, Paul, who was a professional photographer after he retired from diplomatic service.
I Fought the Law: Photographs by Olivia Locher of the Strangest Laws from Each of the 50 States
Olivia Locher. Chronicle, Sept. 5
This quirky book depicts strange, outdated, and laughably specific laws from different states in the U.S. through a series of staged photos.
Items: Is Fashion Modern?
Paola Antonelli and Michelle Millar Fisher. Museum of Modern Art, Sept. 26
Accompanying the first fashion exhibition at MoMA since 1944, this book looks at the impact of 111 clothing items on global culture in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Laurie Anderson: All the Things That I Lost in the Flood
Laurie Anderson. Skira Rizzoli, Oct. 24
The multimedia artist, musician, and filmmaker brings together the most comprehensive collection of her artwork to date, including new experiments with augmented reality.
Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power
Edited by Mark Godfrey and Zoe Whitley. DAP, Sept. 26
This book explores the historical and social contexts of more than 170 works of black visual artists from 1963 to 1983, in the era of Malcolm X and the Black Panthers.
The Sweat of Their Face: Portraying American Workers
David C. Ward, Dorothy Moss, and John Fagg. Smithsonian, Oct. 31
A visual study of working-class subjects as they appear in art, this illustrated book charts the rise and fall of labor from the empowered artisan of the 18th century through industrialization to today’s industrial jobs.
Unpacking My Library: Artists and Their Books
Edited by Jo Steffens and Matthias Neumann. Yale Univ., Nov. 7
Ten contemporary artists tour their personal libraries with photos and reading recommendations, exploring connections between reading, artistic practice, and identity.
Art, Architecture & Photography Listings
5 Continents
Prisoners’ Objects: Collection of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum by Paul Bouvier et al. (Sept. 19, hardcover, $35, ISBN 978-88-7439-760-0) highlights a collection of works, made by political prisoners, housed in International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum in Geneva.
Abbeville
Ansel Adams: The National Parks Service Photographs by Ansel Adams (Sept. 5, hardcover, $24.95, ISBN 978-0-7892-1299-3). In 1941 the photographer was hired by the U.S. Department of the Interior to photograph America’s national parks, producing this group of breathtaking images of the wilderness that has made Adams’s work an enduring influence on environmentalism as well as art.
Abrams
Chihuly: An Artist Collects by Bruce Helander (Sept. 19, hardcover, $35, ISBN 978-1-4197-2762-7) showcases contemporary artist Dale Chihuly’s collection of everyday objects—including ceramic dogs, inkwells, vintage Christmas ornaments, dollhouse furniture, and plastic radios—and considers why people collect. 35,000-copy announced first printing.
Ungrateful Mammals by Dave Eggers (Oct. 17, hardcover, $29.99, ISBN 978-1-4197-2463-3) is an assemblage of original animal-theme drawings paired with humorous or biblical text by novelist Eggers. 50,000-copy announced first printing.
Arcade
A Rift in the Earth: Art, Memory, and the Fight for a Vietnam War Memorial by James Reston Jr. (Sept. 5, hardcover, $24.99, ISBN 978-1-62872-856-9). A distinguished historian and Vietnam vet revisits the culture war that raged around the selection of Maya Lin’s design for the Vietnam memorial. 20,000-copy announced first printing.
Black Dog & Leventhal
Architect: The Pritzker Prize Laureates in Their Own Words, edited by Ruth Peltason and Grace Ong Yan (Nov. 7, hardcover, $60, ISBN 978-0-316-50505-5), goes inside the creative process of all 42 recipients of the most prestigious prize for architecture, and captures their achievements in pictures and their own words. 15,000-copy announced first printing.
Chronicle
I Fought the Law: Photographs by Olivia Locher of the Strangest Laws from Each of the 50 States by Olivia Locher (Sept. 5, hardcover, $16.95, ISBN 978-1-4521-5695-8). Strange, outdated laws from each of the 50 U.S. states—some overturned, some still active, and some merely the stuff of legends—are depicted in this witty collection of staged photographs.
City Lights
Doc/Undoc: Documentado/Undocumented Ars Shamánica Performática by Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Felicia Rice (Nov. 14, trade paper, $35, ISBN 978-0-87286-720-8). MacArthur “genius” award winner Gómez-Peña and book artist Rice create a multimedia border-crossing hybrid: the book as performance art.
DAP
Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, edited by Mark Godfrey and Zoe Whitley (Sept. 26, hardcover, $39.95, ISBN 978-1-942884-17-0), surveys the work of young black artists during a time of radical change, from 1963 to 1983.
Daylight
Transcenders: Spirit Mediums of Burma and Thailand by Mariette Pathy Allen and Eli Coleman (Nov. 14, hardcover, $45, ISBN 978-1-942084-43-3) studies the phenomenon of gender variance among the spirit cults of Burma and Thailand, combining a raw, personal, photographic standpoint with an anthropological and sexological perspective on the gender-fluid spirit mediums in those countries.
Giles
America’s Greatest Library: An Illustrated History of the Library of Congress by John Y. Cole (Jan. 9, hardcover, $39.95, ISBN 978-1-911282-13-6) is a visual history of the Library of Congress, from the original donation of Jefferson’s library to the present day.
Harvard Univ.
Four Walls and a Roof: The Complex Nature of a Simple Profession by Reinier de Graaf (Sept. 25, hardcover, $35, ISBN 978-0-674-97610-8). Drawing on his own tragicomic experiences in the field, de Graaf reveals a candid account of what it is really like to work as an architect.
Indiana Univ.
African Photographer J.A. Green: Reimagining the Indigenous and the Colonial, edited by Martha G. Anderson and Lisa Aronson (Oct. 16, trade paper, $40, ISBN 978-0-253-02895-2) celebrates the work of J.A. Green (1873–1905), one of the most prolific and accomplished indigenous photographers to be active in West Africa.
Johns Hopkins Univ.
Flickering Treasures: Rediscovering Baltimore’s Forgotten Movie Theaters by Amy Davis (Sept. 17, hardcover, $49.95, ISBN 978-1-4214-2218-3). A photojournalist for the Baltimore Sun pairs vintage black-and-white images of that city’s opulent downtown movie palaces and modest neighborhood theaters with her own contemporary full-color photographs.
Knopf
Calder: The Conquest of Time: The Early Years: 1898–1940 by Jed Perl (Oct. 31, hardcover, $50, ISBN 978-0-307-27272-0) is an authoritative biography of 20th-century sculptor, Alexander Calder, based on a wealth of letters and papers never before available.
Laboratory
What Heaven Looks Like: Comments on a Strange Wordless Book by James Elkins (Sept. 19, hardcover, $25, ISBN 978-1-946053-02-2) reproduces an 18th-century book of watercolors by an unknown artist alongside commentary by the art historian obsessed with the artifact.
Little, Brown
David Sedaris Diaries: A Visual Compendium by David Sedaris and Jeffrey Jenkins (Oct. 10, hardcover, $50, ISBN 978-0-316-43171-2) is an illustrated volume of artwork, images, and observations selected from the diaries of author Sedaris. 50,000-copy announced first printing.
Lund Humphries
Travels with Frank Lloyd Wright: The First Global Architect by Gwyn Lloyd Jones (Oct. 1, hardcover, $59.95, ISBN 978-1-84822-226-7). By retracing Frank Lloyd Wright’s footsteps on journeys he made outside of the U.S., this book explores his global ambitions and his lasting legacy, and offers a contemporary view of Wright and his architecture.
Menil Collection
The Condition of Being Here: Drawings by Jasper Johns, essay by David Breslin (Oct. 24, hardcover, $30, ISBN 978-0-300-22930-1), gathers nearly 40 of Johns’s drawings, spanning 60 years of his illustrious career and encompassing his most famous recurring motifs, including flags, targets, and numbers.
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Delirious: Art at the Limits of Reason, 1950–1980 by Kelly Baum, Lucy Bradnock, and Tina Rivers Ryan (Oct. 10, hardcover, $50, ISBN 978-1-58839-633-4) addresses a selection of maniacal, eccentric, and disorienting artworks made between 1950 and 1980 in this unconventional evaluation of postwar art through the lens of delirium.
The Silver Caesars: A Renaissance Mystery, edited by Julia Siemon (Jan. 16, trade paper, $50, ISBN 978-1-58839-639-6), showcases the minute, intricate reliefs on the 12 silver-gilt cups known as the Aldobrandini Tazze featuring figures and scenes from Suetonius’s classic work The Twelve Caesars.
Michigan State Univ. Museum
Ubuntutu: Tributes to Archbishop Desmond and Leah Tutu by Quilt Artists from South Africa and the United States, edited by Marsha MacDowell and Aleia Brown (Aug. 1, trade paper, $40, ISBN 978-0-944311-26-4), features quilts that pay tribute to the memorable contributions that Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the first black archbishop of Cape Town, and his wife, Leah, have made in addressing human rights.
Monacelli
Citymakers by Cassim Shepard, photos by Alex Fradkin, foreword by Rosalie Genevro (Sept. 5, trade paper, $45, ISBN 978-1-58093-485-5), surveys in words and photographs how citizens including community gardeners, architects, and housing advocates are now influencing urbanism, along with planners, politicians, and power brokers.
The Museum of Modern Art
Items: Is Fashion Modern? by Paola Antonelli and Michelle Millar Fisher (Sept. 26, hardcover, $45, ISBN 978-1-63345-036-3). Published to accompany the first fashion exhibition at MoMA since 1944, this book presents 111 items of clothing and accessories that have had a profound impact on global culture in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Louise Bourgeois: An Unfolding Portrait by Deborah Wye (Sept. 19, hardcover, $55, ISBN 978-1-63345-041-7) explores the prints and books of the celebrated sculptor whose little-known body of work in prints is vast in scope and significant within her larger practice; published in conjunction with the exhibition at MoMA.
National Geographic
View from Above: An Astronaut Photographs the World by Terry Virts (Oct. 3, hardcover, $40, ISBN 978-1-4262-1864-4) offers a view of Earth from outer space, featuring imagery taken from the International Space Station by NASA astronaut Virts.
New Press
Out: LGBTQ Poland by Maciek Nabrdalik (Dec. 5, trade paper, $21.95, ISBN 978-1-62097-369-1). This photo essay by a Warsaw photographer explores issues of identity and citizenship in Poland’s LGBTQ community through portraits inspired by the passport photo format.
Norton
American Libraries 1730–1950 by Kenneth Breisch (Sept. 5, hardcover, $75, ISBN 978-0-393-73160-6) is an expansive overview of our storehouses of knowledge, from the earliest library building, in Philadelphia, 1745, to midcentury modern and beyond.
Penguin Press
Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts: Twelve Journeys into the Medieval World by Christopher de Hamel (Oct. 24, hardcover, $45, ISBN 978-1-59420-611-5). The former head of manuscripts at Sotheby’s explores the medieval world through 12 manuscripts.
Phaidon
Annie Leibovitz: Portraits 2005–2016 by Annie Leibovitz (Oct. 25, hardcover, $89.95, ISBN 978-0-7148-7513-2) Famous portraits sit side by side with never before published photographs in the latest collection by renowned photographer Leibovitz.
Artists Who Make Books, edited by Andrew Roth, Philip E. Aarons, and Claire Lehmann (Oct. 9, hardcover, $125, ISBN 978-0-7148-7264-3), surveys 32 internationally recognized artists including Tauba Auerbach and Paul Chan, who make books as part of their creative practice, featuring 500 images of these rarely seen works.
PIE
The Art of the Dinosaur: Illustrations by the Top Paleoartists in the World by Davide Bonadonna, et al. (Oct. 20, hardcover, $49.95, ISBN 978-4-7562-4922-7). Paleoart is any original artistic manifestation that attempts to reconstruct or depict prehistoric life according to the latest knowledge and scientific evidence; this book showcases a selection of work by six artists.
Pomegranate
Ralph Fasanella: Images of Optimism by Leslie Umberger and Marc Fasanella (Sept. 15, hardcover, $35, ISBN 978-0-7649-7950-7). Nearly 70 of the works of Ralph Fasanella (1914–1997), an activist whose paintings chronicle life in early 20th-century New York and the American labor movement, are collected here.
powerHouse
The Hunt: Navigating the Worlds of Art and Design by Patrick Parrish (Dec. 12, trade paper, $19.95, ISBN 978-1-57687-851-4) offers advice, stories, gossip, and pointers on how to go about acquiring top-quality art and design from flea markets and top auction houses in the world, from the owner of the Patrick Parrish Gallery in New York.
Princeton Architectural Press
Joan Miró: I Work Like a Gardener by Joan Miró, compiled by Yvon Taillandier (Oct. 10, hardcover, $19.95, ISBN 978-1-61689-628-7). Based on a 1958 conversation between artist Miró and critic Taillandier, this book examines Miró’s philosophy and creative process.
Princeton Univ.
The Seduction of Curves: The Lines of Beauty That Connect Mathematics, Art, and the Nude by Allan McRobie and Helena Weightman (Oct. 17, hardcover, $35, ISBN 978-0-691-17533-1) is a visual exploration of the language of curves that spans the human body, science, engineering, and art.
Quirk
Cinemaps: An Atlas of 35 Great Movies by Andrew DeGraff (Oct. 24, hardcover, $29.99, ISBN 978-1-59474-989-6) maps popular films, including King Kong, North by Northwest, The Princess Bride, and Pulp Fiction, with the routes of major characters charted in meticulous cartographic detail.
Random/Spiegel & Grau
Avedon: Something Personal by Norma Stevens and Steven M. L. Aronson (Nov. 21, hardcover, $38, ISBN 978-0-8129-9443-8) is an intimate account of fashion photographer Avedon by his closest collaborator, Norma Stevens, whom he acknowledged as both “the soul and the engine of my working life and my great friend.”
Riverhead
Blitt by Barry Blitt (Oct. 24, hardcover, $40, ISBN 978-0-399-57666-9) shares the sketchbooks, drafts, and hilarious rejected illustrations of cartoonist Blitt, whose creations have lampooned politics and culture in America for over two decades.
Rizzoli
Chip Kidd: Book Two by Chip Kidd (Sept. 26, hardcover, $60, ISBN 978-0-8478-6008-1). Haruki Murakami, Neil Gaiman, and Orhan Pamuk contribute essays to this collection of book cover designs from 2007 to 2017 by Kidd. #Girlgaze: How Girls See the World by Amanda de Cadenet et al. (Sept. 12, hardcover, $35, ISBN 978-0-8478-6089-0). This collection of images taken by a new generation of women photographers weaves together candid and formal photos of women living their lives.
Schiffer
Brooklyn’s Sweet Ruin: Relics and Stories of the Domino Sugar Refinery by Paul Raphaelson (Oct. 28, hardcover, $45, ISBN 978-0-7643-5412-0) is a photo essay on Brooklyn’s Domino Sugar Refinery, once the largest sugar refinery in the world, that was shut down in 2004.
Skira Rizzoli
Laurie Anderson: All the Things That I Lost in the Flood by Laurie Anderson (Oct. 24, trade paper, $75, ISBN 978-0-8478-6055-5). This extensive volume traverses four decades of Anderson’s work, including drawing, multimedia installations, performance, and new projects using augmented reality.
Smithsonian
The Sweat of Their Face: Portraying American Workers by David C. Ward, Dorothy Moss, and John Fagg (Oct. 31, hardcover, $39.95, ISBN 978-1-58834-605-6). This companion volume to an exhibition at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery examines working-class subjects as they appear in works by such artists as Winslow Homer, Elizabeth Catlett, Danny Lyon, and Shauna Frischkorn.
Tara
Black: An Artist’s Tribute by Santosh Kumar Das (Oct. 15, hardcover, $35, ISBN 978-93-83145-62-1). A Mithila artist from Madhubani in Bihar pays tribute to the muses that led him to becoming an artist in this artbook-cum-memoir.
Tate
A Queer Little History of Art by Alex Pilcher (Oct. 10, trade paper, $19.95, ISBN 978-1-84976-503-9). This generously illustrated book showcases the breadth and depth of queer art from around the world since 1900, revealing how art itself has played a key role in changing attitudes and crystallizing identities in different historic and contemporary contexts.
Thames & Hudson
France Is a Feast: Paul and Julia Child’s Photographic Journey by Alex Prud’homme and Katie Pratt (Oct. 10, hardcover, $35, ISBN 978-0-500-51907-3) documents how Julia Child first discovered French cooking and the French way of life through intimate photographs taken by her husband, Paul Child.
The Unfinished Palazzo: Life, Love and Art in Venice by Judith Mackrell (Sept. 5, hardcover, $34.95, ISBN 978-0-500-51866-3) is the story of the Palazzo Venier—started in 1750, but never finished—told through the lives of three of its most unconventional residents of the 20th century: Luisa Casati, Doris Castlerosse, and Peggy Guggenheim.
Univ. Of Chicago
Perfect Wave: More Essays on Art and Democracy by Dave Hickey (Nov. 3, hardcover, $25, ISBN 978-0-226-33313-7) brings together essays on a wide range of subjects from throughout Hickey’s career, displaying his usual breadth of interest and insight into what makes art work, or not, and why we care.
Univ. of Texas
Souls Against the Concrete by Khalik Allah (Oct. 18, hardcover, $50, ISBN 978-1-4773-1314-5). A collection of nocturnal urban life offers a powerful and rare glimpse into the enduring spirit of a slowly gentrifying Harlem street corner, 125th Street and Lexington Avenue.
Vendome
Versailles: The Great and Hidden Splendors of the Sun King’s Palace by Catherine Pégard et al. (Sept. 12, hardcover, $95, ISBN 978-0-86565-342-9) showcases the work of four talented photographers who were granted unlimited access to Versailles when the château was closed to visitors.
White Star
Street Art: 20 Famous Artists Talk About Their Vision by Alessandra Mattanza (Nov. 7, hardcover, $35, ISBN 978-88-544-1199-9) is a collection of interviews with 20 of the most renowned figures in the street-art scene, including painters, sculptors, and stencilists, who reveal their stories and their inspiration.
Yale Univ.
By the Pen and What They Write: Writing in Islamic Art and Culture, edited by Sheila S. Blair and Jonathan M. Bloom (Oct. 31, hardcover, $75, ISBN 978-0-300-22824-3) looks at how calligraphy and writing has remained a foundational component of Islamic art throughout 14 centuries.
Unpacking My Library: Artists and Their Books, edited by Jo Steffens and Matthias Neumann (Nov. 7, hardcover, $20, ISBN 978-0-300-21698-1) tours the bookshelves of 10 leading artists, including Tracey Emin, Ed Ruscha, and Carrie Mae Weems, exploring the intricate connections between reading, artistic practice, and identity; includes Marcel Proust’s essay “On Reading.”
Yale Univ. Art Gallery
Art Can Help: New and Selected Essays by Robert Adams (Sept. 12, hardcover, $25, ISBN 978-0-300-22924-0) is a collection of inspiring essays by photographer Adams, who advocates the meaningfulness of art in a disillusioned society.
Artists in Exile: Expressions of Loss and Hope by Frauke V. Josenhans et al. (Sept. 26, trade paper, $45, ISBN 978-0-300-22570-9) surveys artists in exile, from the 19th century through the present day, with notable attention to Asian, Latin American, African-American, and women artists.
