Art books make excellent gifts for art lovers. Whether it’s because you enjoy the slow pleasure of perusing images of art at home or you love the cultural cache of a new coffee table objet, receiving an art book is very often an exciting experience. An art tome can set creativity ablaze while adding breadth and depth to someone’s book collection.
We’ve taken some of the best recent releases, from a rollicking tale of breaking into the New York art world to a charged visual history of the male erotic magazine Playgirl, to help avoid decision paralysis this holiday season. So, check out these art books to help guide your last-minute gift-giving plans.
Mondrian: His Life, His Art, His Quest for the Absolute by Nicholas Fox Weber
A fine biography can deeply immerse you in the life of a great artist—exposing both their feats and their fault lines. In Mondrian, culture critic Nicholas Fox Weber offers a thoroughly researched and unsparing portrait of the avant-garde creator Piet Mondrian. The painter was the leading proponent of neoplasticism, a movement favoring sharp lines and bold colors, which asserted that geometric strokes afforded viewers an innate “spiritual grace” to art. Mondrian’s belief was about moving beyond everyday guises and seeking out the purer essences in painting. But like many greats, he had several notably unsavory qualities, including a mercurial personality and antisemitic views, which Weber also reckons with in this nuanced account of one pioneering painter.
Love, Joe: The Selected Letters of Joe Brainard by Daniel Kane
Joe Brainard’s artwork was intimate and small-scale and would usually carry either a sincerity in tone (like his paintings of pansies) or bawdy humor (kitschy works constructed with used cigarette butts). His writing, perhaps better known than his art, is far more magnetic. This is especially true of his postmodern memoir I Remember, which remains a deeply powerful statement of sexuality and becoming in 1950s America. Love, Joe reveals the unvarnished side of an artist whose writing was sharp-eyed and lucid but whose letters were usually uneven and scattered. It includes correspondences with contemporaries, like poet Frank O’Hara and singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell, on everything from sex to money to failure—all the usual trials of a modern artist. A great addition to have for any creative needing regular inspiration (or consolation).
The Lies of the Artists: Essays on Italian Art, 1450–1750 by Ingrid D. Rowland
For the more well-read art lover, consider this riveting new essay collection rethinking the impulses of Renaissance art. From art scholar Ingrid D. Rowland, The Lies of the Artists examines the “lies” of Renaissance masters: showing reality so brilliantly, they gave us the sublime. The biographical details and working methods of painters like Michelangelo, Bernini and Caravaggio (and some lesser-known creators like Artemisia Gentileschi) are discerningly dissected, all to elevate our appreciation of the artistic command of these greats. Rest assured, the book may sometimes be scholarly, but Rowland’s prose is clever and tone humorous, as she brings fresh observations to this often over-studied art period and resuscitates the reputation of others overlooked by history.
The Art of the Literary Poster by Allison Rudnick
Gone are the days when most new novels and books received the poster treatment. But at the turn of the last century, it was a booming industry. The Art of the Literary Poster retraces the early start of poster advertisements that celebrated new literary works in a highly artistic way, adopting bold typographies and colorful illustrations. Posters featured in this coffee table book include those by a veritable vanguard of illustrators and graphic designers, such as Florence Lundborg and Edward Penfield. The works embraced the emerging field of advertising psychology while framing literary works in alluring and innovative designs previously unseen. Many posters were first featured in high-end periodicals like Harper’s and Lippincott’s and were the subject of a lively show at The Met earlier in 2024.
How Banksy Saved Art History by Kelly Grovier
Banksy, the single-name artist and modern specter, is a moniker that excites some and perhaps bores others. The polarizing U.K. street artist has been scrawling across the urban landscape for three decades with distinct bold murals and stenciled illustrations, with his works now attracting one pretty penny. In How Banksy Saved Art History, art critic Kelly Grovier makes an impassioned case on the power of Banksy’s intertextual artworks—drawing on everyone from Claude Monet to Damien Hirst—that reanimate bygone paintings for a contemporary audience. By taking these pieces outside the museums and into the urban landscape, Banksy tries to challenge the celebrity, status and elitism that insulates these revered artworks and democratizes access to the masses—a phenomenon in which Banksy himself is now, ironically, participating. An arch but also accessible new analysis of one polarizing disrupter.
Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining by J. W. Rinzler and
For cinephiles and Stanley Kubrick worshippers, look no further this holiday season than Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. A new mammoth red(rum) compendium from Taschen proves the definitive book of the unsettling classic 1980 horror film, The Shining. The two-book box set features extensive and exclusive new interviews with the cast and crew; never-before-seen production photographs; rare documents and correspondence; and even an exclusive look at deleted scenes from the film. Cleverly encased in a red scrapbook/hotel guest book, the set was the brainchild of Kubrick aficionado Academy Award-winning director Lee Unkrich and even given the stamp of approval by Steven Spielberg (who contributes a foreword). Avoid all work and no play and indulge in this comprehensive photobook at your own version of the Overlook.
Get the Picture: A Mind-Bending Journey among the Inspired Artists and Obsessive Art Fiends Who Taught Me How to See by Bianca Bosker
Those game for an immersive ride into the modern art world, this one is for you. Get the Picture sees writer Bianca Bosker go gonzo and infiltrate the New York art world to understand whether art can make for a “richer, more uncomfortable, more mind-blowing” life. She does everything from working for an “ass influencer” (an artist who sits on people’s faces) to taking gigs as a security guard at the Guggenheim to chart one wild fly-on-the-wall account of the art scene today. With stories as fascinating as they are outrageous (like getting booked to curate a Hong Kong art show or interning for a lifeless hipster at an elite gallery), Bosker’s memoir of Manhattan’s art scene is a boisterous and energetic account of penetrating an elite world fueled by pretension and hype as much as creativity and passion.
Playgirl: The Official History of a Cult Magazine
Partly a feminist response to Playboy and partly to capitalize on the popularity of male nudes in mags, Playgirl launched in 1973 as a titillating magazine for women. With a combination of male nude spreads and reporting and general interest, Playgirl has had a dynamic history, one first rooted in the 1970s women’s liberation movement and later evolving into a popular gay men’s mag with its eroticized male pictures. This eponymous official retelling of Playgirl lore features scintillating photos and provocative spreads (no puns intended!). This is alongside historical reporting and features, which ultimately attempt to chronicle one controversial publication’s history trying to provide a feminist response to the sexualization of women in popular magazines.
The Artist’s Palette by Alexandra Loske
For anyone interested in the palettes of artists great and gone, this one is for you. The Artist’s Palette captures images of fifty unique palettes paired with the famed paintings of the revered artists who painted the works. The lurid images of these palettes—from those of Piet Mondrian to Vincent van Gogh to Edward Hopper—offer a close glimpse at the colors, brushstrokes and acrylic idiosyncrasies favored by these acclaimed artists. Such prized wooden blocks, all imbued with personalized mixes and blends of paint, are closely cataloged alongside expert commentary that enriches our understanding of these practitioners and the way their private palettes otherwise enable incredible visual brilliance.
Paris in Ruins: Love, War, and the Birth of Impressionism by Sebastian Smee
Sebastian Smee, the Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic of The Washington Post, re-examines the birth of Impressionism, a movement characterized by its looser depiction of reality and emphasis on sensory feeling. In Paris in Ruins, Smee argues that this new style emerged in the aftermath of military and civil conflict in Paris in 1870 owing to the “existential fragility” of life in a city totally ravaged and a nation unsettled. Works by key artists like Edouard Manet and Edgar Degas reflect themes of transition and even grief, capturing the sense of displacement wrought by the devastation of violence. A deft and discerning portrait exposing the darkness and grief lying behind some paintings so defined by light and vividness.
The Commonality of Humans Through Art edited by Stuart Handler
The Commonality of Humans Through Art: How Art Connects Mankind Through the Ages, edited by Stuart Handler, is a comprehensive exploration of how the language of art has unified diverse cultures over the past 30,000 years, but unlike many other books in the same vein, it’s organized thematically. Readers are taken on a journey of universal human experiences from birth through to death via 400 color photos of ancient and tribal art in museums and private collections worldwide paired with essays by ten leading scholars writing on topics such as creation myths, family, conflict and ritual. More than just a visually stunning coffee table book, it’s also a book about our humanity.
